Direct Femtosecond Laser Printing of Silk Fibroin Microstructures

• Autor(a) principal: Santos, Moliria V.
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: Paula, Kelly T., De Andrade, Marcelo B., Gomes, Emmanuel M., Marques, Lippy F., Ribeiro, Sidney J. L. [UNESP], Mendonça, Cleber R.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UNESP
• Texto Completo: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsami.0c13482; http://hdl.handle.net/11449/208118
• topic: direct laser printing; femtosecond laser; lanthanides β-diketonate complex; LIFT; luminescence; microprinting; rare earth; silk fibroin

Fabrication of functional silk fibroin microstructures has extensive applications in biotechnology and photonics. Considerable progress has been made based on lithographic methods and self-assembly approaches. However, most methods require chemical modification of silk fibroin, which restricts the functionalities of the designed materials. At the same time, femtosecond laser-induced forward transfer (fs-LIFT) has been explored as a simple and attractive processing tool for microprinting of high-resolution structures. In this paper, we propose the use of LIFT with fs-pulses for creating high-resolution structures of regenerated silk fibroin (SF). Furthermore, upon adding Eu3+/Tb3+ complexes to SF, we have been able to demonstrate the printing by LIFT of luminescent SF structures with a resolution on the order of 2 μm and without material degradation. This approach provides a facile method for printing well-defined two-dimensional (2D) micropatterns of pure and functionalized SF, which can be used in a wide range of optical and biomedical applications.