Fabrication and characterization of three-dimensional silk fibroin scaffolds using a mixture of salt/sucrose

This study described the preparation of three-dimensional (3-D) silk fibroin (SF) scaffolds, which derived from a mixed salt/sucrose leaching without the process of lyophilization. Compared with the previous method, this fabrication of 3-D SF scaffold is simple and can have more diverse morphological appearances of pores depending on the different salt/sucrose mixing concentrations. The correlation between pore shape and septum of SF scaffolds or salt concentration was examined by SEM. Additionally, the effects of salt or glucose concentrations on mechanical properties, such as compressive modulus in dry and wet states, were studied. For the materials with ranged between 69–88%, water binding capacity decreased with increasing salt or decreasing sucrose. After cell seeding and culture, SEM images of scaffolds showed that cell infiltrations were increased along with increased sucrose concentration. Analysis of Masson’s trichrome staining showed positive findings for collagen deposits in scaffolds of the 100% sucrose type. Thus, our new method can fabricate 3-D SF scaffolds with different characteristics, and may be used for various tissue engineering uses.