Fabrication, Structural Characteristics and Properties of a New Wool Based Non-Woven Fabric

Silk sericin has a good biocompatibility, wound healing effect, and high water retention. Owing to the unique properties, it has been extensively studied to apply it to cosmetic and biomedical fields. Recently, a silk natural nonwoven fabric was successfully fabricated by using the adhesion character of sericin. In this study, a sericin was coated to wool fiber to provide a binding character of wool fiber and to improve the biocompatibility of wool. Also, the sericin coated wool nonwoven fabric was fabricated by carding, wetting, and hot press processes and the effect of the sericin amount on the structural characteristics and properties of the fabrics was investigated. It was found by FE-SEM observation that more sericin was well coated in wool fibers of the nonwoven fabric with increase of sericin addition. As the addition amount of sericin increased until a certain point, the breaking strength of the nonwoven fabric was increased, and then kept unchanged with further increase of sericin addition. Regardless of sericin content, all sericin coated wool non-woven fabrics showed a good cell viability.