Abstract

With the increasing awareness of human environmental protection, the development of biodegradable bio-based materials has received more attention. As the off-cuts of silk, a natural protein fiber, waste silk still retains excellent properties such as biodegradability and biocompatibility, recycling and utilization of waste silk is currently very limited. To find a possible method to recycle low-cost waste silk and process it into high-value-added products, in this work, the waste silk from the silk spinning process was prepared into silk nonwoven (SN) with excellent air permeability, softness, water–oil amphiphilicity, biodegradability, and ultraviolet resistance by the wet laid process. The results showed that the uniform SN could be prepared when the alkali concentration was higher than 0.6%. The permeability of SN is higher than 80 mm/s, and the bending stiffness is lower than 0.085gf·cm²/cm. Notably, SN possesses entanglement at both fiber and fibril levels, enabling it to achieve a base strength of 0.58 MPa without additional reinforcement. The water contact angle and oil contact angle of SN were below 40° and 50°, respectively. The ultraviolet protection of SN-0.6 was classified as very good, with a degradation rate of 4.31% of SN-0.6 after 30 days of burial. The present research shows that silk nonwoven is a potential bio-based material with promising applications in the field of packaging and cleaning.

Graphical abstract