Fabrication of Sericin into Micro- and Macro Size Materials and its Application

Over the past decades, silk sericin (SS) received increasing attention in the academic and industrial fields. In nature, SS acts as a glue that holds the two strands of silk fibrils together. However, recent works suggest that SS might have a more diverse role during the silk spinning process, such as stabilizing the SF in the silk gland. On the other hand, the sericulture industry has been trying to find novel applications for SS discarded from the silk fabric manufacturing process. Recovery and refining of SS would be the first step of the recycling of SS. Using a proper solvent SS could be shaped into various forms, such as spherical beads, microparticles, fibers, and films. Moreover, the applicability of these SS materials has been investigated in various fields such as cosmetics, templates for nanomaterials, drug delivery, heavy metal adsorption, and enzyme immobilization.