Ionic liquids to process silk fibroin and wool keratin for bio-sustainable and biomedical applications

The use of ionic liquids (ILs) is emerging as innovative strategy for the design of bio-based materials, allowing the creation of more effective, safer and environmentally benign products. They can be preferred to conventional organic solvents because offer the opportunity to drastically reduce undesired by-products. This makes their use suitable to process high value-added proteins from animal source--i.e., wool keratin (WK) and silk fibroin (SF)--toward a more conscious use of renewable and sustainable materials for a variety of green inspired applications. Herein, it is proposed an extended overview of currently used technological approaches to manipulate protein-based materials in different forms (i.e., polymer blends, bio-composites, electro-responsive materials, fibers, or nanoparticles) by using ILs for different bio-sustainable and biomedical applications.