Abstract Fluorescent silk fibroin materials have wide applications in tissue engineering and bioassay system, but the inhomogeneity of fluorescence and high amount of additive hinder their development. In this study, we reported a super-strong composite silk with excellent blue fluorescence intensity and uniformity by feeding silkworm trace amount of hexaphenylsilole (HPS) (0.0012‰ in the diet), an important aggregation-induced emission (AIE) molecule. The incorporation of HPS nanoparticles in silk altered the second structures of silk fibroin, reduced crystallinity and crystallite size and induced orientation of crystalline region. In addition, the obtained composite silk exhibited strong mechanical properties with breaking elongation of 11.9 ± 1.7% and breaking strength of 503.0 ± 44.4 MPa, improvement of 17.8% and 54.0%, respectively, in comparison with regular silk. These super-strong and uniform fluorescent silks may pave a route to prevent the quenching effect of conventional fluorescent silk fibroin materials and be potentially applied in biomedical field.

中文翻译：

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来自微量AIE纳米粒子的超强均匀荧光复合丝

摘要 荧光丝素蛋白材料在组织工程和生物检测系统中有着广泛的应用，但荧光的不均匀性和大量的添加剂阻碍了其发展。在这项研究中，我们通过给家蚕喂食微量六苯基硅酮 (HPS)（饲料中的 0.0012‰），一种重要的聚集诱导发射（AIE）分子，报道了一种具有优异蓝色荧光强度和均匀性的超强复合丝。HPS 纳米粒子在丝绸中的加入改变了丝素蛋白的第二结构，降低了结晶度和微晶尺寸，并诱导了结晶区域的取向。此外，所得复合丝具有较强的力学性能，断裂伸长率为11.9±1.7%，断裂强度为503.0±44.4 MPa，分别提高了17.8%和54.0%，与普通丝绸相比。这些超强且均匀的荧光丝可能为防止传统荧光丝素蛋白材料的猝灭效应铺平道路，并有可能在生物医学领域得到应用。