Contatto di riferimento: Marta Tessarolo
Partecipanti: Dr. Vamsi Yadavalli: Department of Chemical and Life Science Engineering, Virginia Commonwealth University
Biomimetic composites of naturally derived and synthetic polymers provide exciting opportunities to develop soft, flexible, biocompatible, and physiologically compliant devices for diverse applications in healthcare. Bioinspired materials can serve not only as the structural, but also as the functional components of such devices. This poses material-specific functionalization and fabrication related challenges in the design and fabrication of these systems.
Natural silk protein biopolymers show tremendous promise in this regard due to intrinsic properties of mechanical performance, optical transparency, biocompatibility, biodegradability, processability, and the ability to stabilize biomolecules. The exceptional ensemble of properties provides opportunities to employ silk proteins for numerous applications.
This talk will discuss some of the recent work from our group in transitioning from the silk cocoon to protein based biocomposites that can be used as biosensors, electrodes, biophotonic elements, drug delivery vehicles, and energy storage devices. By integrating microfabrication tools with natural materials, we show how high resolution, high fidelity structures can be patterned in both rigid and flexible formats in two and three dimensions. Composites with materials such as conducting polymers provide added functionality as opto-electronic architectures.
The ease of fabrication, biochemical functionalization, biocompatibility, as well as tunable mechanical properties and biodegradation of these biomaterials provide unique possibilities as sustainable, bioresorbable protein microdevices.