Study of Whisker and Glass Fibre Reinforced Wool Keratin Films and Their Preparation

This paper presents the related theories and current situation of regenerated keratin materials, as well as fibre reinforced composite materials, which are used to evaluate the feasibility of glass fibres and whisker reinforced wool keratin films. Although blending biopolymers is the traditional way to improve the mechanical properties of keratin materials, wool keratin, which consists of only a few percentages in composite materials, would not have an outstanding performance biologically. In this article, we examine the processes of developing fibre reinforced keratin materials, including the dissolution of wool fibres, dispersion of reinforcements, and interface study of the reinforcements/matrix. The results suggest that both glass fibres and whiskers distribute uniformly and bond well with keratin matrix through observations with an optical microscope and scanning electron microscope (SEM). Moreover, the effects of reinforcement alignment, as well as fibre concentration, can be used to predict the tensile strength (TS) of regenerated keratin materials for further experiments.