Effect of degumming on tussah silk fibre

Abstract

Silk fibre is well recognized as an outstanding material for bio-medical engineering application because of its superior mechanical and bioresorbable properties. However, when producing silk fibre reinforced polymer composites, hydrophilic sericin has been found to cause poor interfacial bonding with polymer. Besides, sericin on the fibre surface is a major cause of adverse problems with biocompatibility and hypersensitivity to silk for implant application. Therefore, certain treatment should be proposed for sericin removal. Degumming is a surface modification process which allows for a wide control of the silk fibre’s properties, making silk possible to be used for the development and production of novel bio-composites. In this paper, a cleaner and environmental friendly surface modification technique of tussah silk was under investigated. The effectiveness of parameters of degumming on tussah silk such as surface purity, degumming time and temperature is discussed. The evaluation of the data was carried out through the measurement of the tensile properties and surface morphology of the samples. The findings of this research provide an environmental friendly degumming method which is one of the most important steps on preparation of silk fibre reinforced composite.