Fabrication of High Toughness Silk Fibroin/Tungsten Disulfide Nanoparticles Hybrid Fiber and Self-Heating Textile by Wet Spinning

Traditionally, silkworm silk has been used to make high-quality textiles. Nevertheless, various wastes from silk-worm silk textiles that are no longer used are increasing, which is also causing considerable waste and contam-ination. This issue is causing widespread concern in countries that use more silk. Regenerated silk fibroin (RSF) fibers have been shown to be fragile and tender, which prohibits RSF from being widely used as a structural com-ponent. Therefore, enriching the function of silk and enhancing the RSF mechanical properties are important directions to expand the comprehensive utilization of silk products. In the present research, wet spinning was used to create a series of RSF/tungsten disulfide (WS2) nanoparticles (NPs) hybrid fiber having distinct WS2 nanoparticles concentrations. It was discovered that the temperature of hybrid fibers containing 0.8 wt% RSF/WS2 nanoparticles might climb from 20.4 degrees C to 85.6 degrees C in 1 min and 108.3 degrees C in 10 min after being exposed to simulated sunlight for a period of one minute and ten minutes. It also had certain antibacterial activity and thermal stability. Fabrics created by hand mixing had outstanding photothermal characteristics under natural sunlight. Further-more, adding WS2 nanoparticles might increase the tensile properties of hybrid fibers, which could be caused by the reality that the blending of WS2 nanoparticles inhibited the self-assembly of beta-sheets in RSF reaction mixture in a dosage-dependent way, as evidenced by the fact that RSF/WS2 nanoparticles hybrid fibers had lesser beta-sheets material, crystalline nature, and crystalline size. The above performance makes the RSF/WS2 nanoparticles hybrid fibers promising candidates for application in photothermal fabrics as well as military clothing.