In order to fabricate a high performance silk fiber/fiboin composite

both effects of LiBr pretreatment and methanol post treatment on the interface compatibility between the silk fiber and the silk fibroin matrix were studied in this article.The mechanical properties

structure and morphology of the silk fiber/fibroin composite were investigated via tensile test

X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM)

etc.The results of tensile test demonstrated that the optimized pretreatment method was achieved by employing 6 mol L-1 LiBr aqueous solution on aligned silk fibers for 10 min.Under such pretreatment

the longitudinal tensile stress

elongation at break and breaking energy of the silk fiber/fibroin composite with a silk amount of 20 wt% were 142 MPa

23.5% and 18.6 kJ kg-1

respectively.After methanol post treatment

the interface adhesions of the silk fiber/fibroin composite were further enhanced as compared to the untreated ones.The transverse tensile stress and elongation at break were 46 MPa (versus 20 MPa) and 2.4% (versus 1.3%)

respectively.Besides

SEM images of the fracture section of silk fiber/fibroin composites in the directions parallel and perpendicular to the fiber array also showed that the compatibility between the silk fiber and the silk fibroin matrix was improved after both treatments.