Silk-mediated synthesis and modification of photoluminescent ZnO nanoparticles

• DOI: 10.1007/s11051-012-0726-7
• Publication Date: 2012-01-25T05:15:53Z
• Authors: Jie Han; Huilan Su; Jia Xu; Weiqiang Song; Yu Gu; Ying Chen; Won-Jin Moon; Di Zhang
• Keywords: Fibroin; Biocompatibility; Biocompatible material

In this article, a bio-inspired silk-mediated method was established to produce natural material-modified photoluminescent zinc oxide nanoparticles (nano-ZnO). Silk fibroin fibers were employed as the reactive substrates to synthesize nano-ZnO, and silk fibroins (SF) were taken as the biocompatible stabilizers to modify dispersed nano-ZnO. As-prepared nano-ZnO were mainly hexagonal phase particles with diameter around 13 nm. The resulting nano-ZnO/SF hybrids displayed orange emission and good biocompatibility in aqueous system.