Influence of a strong polyelectrolyte on a system formed by silk fibroin and sodium alginate

Resumo

The study of natural polymers is of great importance because of their characteristics such as biodegradability, biocompatibility and low toxicity. The production of blends with polymers is necessary to better the understanding and use of its characteristics. The system formed of sodium alginate (SA) and silk fibroin (SF) is know to be partially miscible, but there are not many studies about this system in the literature from a thermodynamics perspective. This study has as objective investigate the influence of a strong polyelectrolyte in the morphology and polymer interaction of the system formed by SF and SA. To do that, X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy with attenuated total reflection and scanning electron microscopy was performed in 7 blends with different proportions of SF, SA, water and polystyrene sulfonate (SPS). Results show that there is an influence of the SPS in the system formed by the natural polymers when comparing the data with blends without the presence of the polyelectrolyte.