Figure 4.
The effect of degumming on 3D porous silk scaffolds. (A) Degumming duration had an observable effect on porous silk scaffold assembly. Both the size and shape of the scaffolds was affected by how long the silk fibroin was degummed (scale bar = 1.5 cm). (B-D) Characteristic SEM images showed that the 5 mb, 30 mb, and 60 mb sponges had different pore sizes and interconnectivity (scale bars = 100 µm). (E) MIP analysis shows that the 5 mb and 60 mb samples had a tri-modal distribution of pore sizes (inset) while the 30 mb sample had a monomodal pore size distribution and substantially higher porosity.