One-step hydrothermal synthesis of ultrafine silk fibroin nanofibrils with controllable morphology and their decoration of Ag nanoparticles with enhanced antibacterial property

Abstract In this study, a one-step hydrothermal route was for the first time developed to synthesize the ultrafine silk fibroin nanofibrils (SF NFs) with controllable morphology. Morphology of SF NFs was highly dependent on hydrothermal time. An increase in time from 1 h to 6 h caused a significant change in morphology of SF NFs from irregular particles (50 nm ~ 300 nm) to ultrafine NFs (6 ± 1 nm to 11 ± 2 nm). Further, SF NFs could serve as reducing and stabilizing agent for conversion of AgNO3 to Ag nanoparticles and the resultant SF@Ag NFs had the core-shell structure where SF NFs were core part and Ag NPs (3 ± 1 nm) were outer part. SF@Ag NFs showed good anti-bacterial property to inhibit the growth of bacteria.