Regensburg 2022 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 25: Bioinspired Systems

BP 25.3: Talk

Thursday, September 8, 2022, 11:30–11:45, H13

Structured keratin films as artificial nail plate model — •Kim Thomann, Andreas Späth, and Rainer H. Fink — Lehrstuhl für Physikalische Chemie II, Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Egerlandstr. 3, D-91058, Erlangen, Germany

Human fingernails can be studied ex vivo only in form of clippings which offer limited insight as they do not necessarily reflect the behavior of the whole nail. Keratin films (KFs) may potentially serve as human fingernail substitute, which is especially relevant for the medical and cosmetics sector. In order to model the nail's adhesive characteristics, structured and unstructured films from keratin extracted from human hair and nails were produced. The fingernail being the reference, the KFs were characterized with a number of complementary techniques, including SEM, confocal microscopy, contact angle (CA) measurements, XPS, ATR-FTIR and SAXS. In terms of composition, the prepared films show good resemblance, regardless of keratin origin. The nail's microstructured topography is well matched by the structured KFs. CA measurements revealed that the surface free energy is in the same range for both KF types. However, the structured KFs fit the nail's component composition better. Thus, the structured KFs represent a good approach to achieve a satisfying model in terms of wetting while combining both composition and topography aspects. The research is funded by the BMBF within project 05K19WE2.