A facile fabrication of silk/MoS₂ hybrids for Photothermal therapy

Photothermal therapy, due to its safety and effectiveness, has attracted tremendous interest in the area of cancer treatment in recent few decades. The emerging of two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides has provided this promising therapy with a novel genus of nanomaterials. Herein, we present a facile one-step way to prepare a hybrid of regenerated silk fibroin (RSF) and molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) nanosheets simply by directly adding MoS₂ dispersion into RSF aqueous solution to induce the self-assembly of silk protein on the surface of MoS₂ flakes. The produced RSF/MoS₂ hybrids demonstrate better photothermal performance and less cytotoxicity than the pristine MoS₂. In the meantime, the RSF/MoS₂ hybrids show a good photothermal stability. Finally and importantly, the RSF/MoS₂ hybrids display a satisfying photothermal capability on ablating HeLa cells in vitro, which imply that such a protein/inorganic hybrid material holds a great promise as a photothermal agent in future cancer treatment. - Highlights: • A one-step way is used to prepare RSF-MoS₂ hybrids, avoiding the complicated chemical process to exfoliate MoS₂ nanosheets. • RSF nanofibrils are formed on the surfaces of the MoS₂ flakes by silk protein self-assembly. • RSF/MoS₂ hybrids with low RSF content exhibit enhanced photothermal effect compared with the pristine MoS₂ dispersion. • RSF/MoS₂ hybrids show better biocompatibility than pristine MoS₂ due to the protein nature of silk fibroin. • RSF/MoS₂ hybrids can ablate cancer cells effectively, showing potential in photothermal therapy for cancer treatment.