Thermoplastic molded regenerated silk fibroin was proposed as a structural material in tissue engineering applications, mainly for application in bone. The protocol allows us to obtain a compact non-porous material with a compression modulus in the order of a Giga Pascal in dry conditions (and in the order of tens of MPa in wet conditions). This material is produced by compressing a lyophilized silk fibroin powder or sponge into a mold temperature higher than the glass transition temperature. The main purpose of the produced resin was the osteofixation and other structural applications in which the lack of porosity was not an issue. In this work, we introduced the use of citric acid in the thermoplastic molding protocol of silk fibroin to obtain porosity inside the structural material. The citric acid powder during the compression acted as a template for the pore formation. The mean pore diameter achieved by the addition of the higher amount of citric acid was around 5 μm. In addition, citric acid could effectively crosslink the silk fibroin chain, improving its mechanical strength. This effect was proved both by evaluating the compression modulus (the highest value recorded was 77 MPa in wet conditions) and by studying the spectra obtained by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. This protocol may be applied in the near future to the production of structural bone scaffolds.
Keywords: bone scaffold; bone tissue engineering; citric acid; compression molding; silk resin.