APS Logo

Characterization of Silk/Cellulose Biocomposites Infused with rGO

ORAL

Abstract

In the recent years, biomaterials from renewable sources have shown potential in medicine and materials science alike. Biomaterials are a class of materials and have been of interest in the recent decades due to their abundance, low cost, biocompatibility, and tunable morphological and physicochemical properties. Cellulose is appealing to the industry due to its crystalline and amorphous regions; while silk is made up of flexible protein fibers, is attractive due to its tunable biodegradation and biocompatibility. When the two natural polymers are mixed together, their properties can be tuned by changing material composition and fabrication method. Reduced graphene oxide (rGO) is ideal to increase molecular interactions and stabilization of these two components due to its strong oxidizing properties. We explore how rGO affects the carbohydrate crystallinity and protein secondary structure formation as well as their physicochemical properties including ionic conductivity. The biocomposites with rGO were investigated using FTIR, SEM, X-Ray Scattering, DSC, TGA, and DRS. The results showed that rGO stabilizes the morphology and thermal properties of the biocomposites. Additionally, they demonstrate that the cellulose crystallinity and the silk beta sheet content influence the ionic conductivity of the materials. With the DRS data collected as well as the Fulcher VFT Model and Arrhenius expression, the activation energy of the biocomposites were calculated.

–

Authors

  • Abneris Morales

    Self

  • Bailey Blessing

    co-author

  • Karleena Rybacki

    co-author

  • Stacy Love

    co-author

  • Sean O'Malley

    co-author

  • Anuradha Gupta

    New Jersey Inst of Tech, Pennsylvania State University, Bard College, University of Mississippi, Drexel Univ, Collaborator, University of Dayton, Morgan State University, Louisiana State University, University of Geneva, Instituto Superior Tecnico - Lisboa, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Rutgers University, Institute for Quantitative Biomedicine, Rutgers University, Pennsylvania State University, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Chemical Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, Department of Physics, Rutgers University, Max-Planck-Institut für Festkörperforschung, Heisenbergstrasse 1, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany, Department of Physics and Fribourg Center for Nanomaterials, University of Fribourg, Chemin du Musée 3, CH-1700 Fribourg, Switzerland, The MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, 1010 Auckland, New Zealand, Department of Physics, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795, USA, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, USA, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA, Space Research Institute of RAS, Moscow, Russia, Georgetown University, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, University of Delaware, Brookhaven National Laboratory, San Diego State University, University of Chicago, University of Illinois at Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA, University of Washington

  • David Salas-de la Cruz

    PI