Fibroin-based eco-friendly composites for advanced sensing applications

Nowadays, developing sensing structures for human health monitoring and well-being is essential and can serve as irreplaceable tools to improve the quality of life. Thus, there is a dramatically growing demand for new materials with advanced functionalities for their application in smart sensing technologies. Therefore, the preparation of novel eco-friendly sensing composites and their integration into fiber materials and electronic textiles to provide health status and body monitoring is a challenging issue. Moreover, the existing electronic textiles are mainly powered by conventional batteries, which increase their weight and reduce comfort. Silk fibroin is a natural protein with attractive mechanical and physicochemical properties. The tuning of its structural, morphological, and electrical properties by coupling with other proteins may open new perspectives for its integration in wearable smart textiles. Herein, we report the fabrication of composite materials based on silk fibroin natural protein and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS). We analyzed the morphology, structure, and chemical composition of prepared materials in detail considering their effect on the porosity, and mechanical and electrical properties of composites. We investigated the sensing performance of composites by properly controlling their composition and the effect of each component on their functionalities. Furthermore, we systematically studied the influence of the aforementioned parameters considering the sensitivity and selectivity of materials. Our experimental findings indicate that the composition and porosity of composite sensing materials are critical for their interaction with volatile organic compounds (VOCs) present in human sweat and exhaled breath. These achievements ensure new insights for enhancing sensing response and selectivity of fibroin-based materials. The results of this research study indicate that we developed an efficient strategy for the fabrication of cost-effective, biocompatible, and biodegradable sponge-like composites with excellent mechanical and sensing performance to be used in the diagnosis of diseases and human health management.