Silk-mediated synthesis and modification of photoluminescent ZnO nanoparticles

In this article, a bio-inspired silk-mediated method was established to produce natural material-modified photoluminescent zinc oxide nanoparticles (nano-ZnO). Silk fibroin fibers were employed as the reactive substrates to synthesize nano-ZnO, and silk fibroins (SF) were taken as the biocompatible stabilizers to modify dispersed nano-ZnO. As-prepared nano-ZnO were mainly hexagonal phase particles with diameter around 13 nm. The resulting nano-ZnO/SF hybrids displayed orange emission and good biocompatibility in aqueous system.