A comprehensive review on the preparation, properties and applications of carbonized silk fabrics

Silk has emerged as a promising sustainable precursor for the fabrication of high-performance carbon fibers and fabrics due to its unique hierarchical architecture, high β-sheet crystallinity, intrinsic nitrogen content, and excellent thermal stability. This review comprehensively summarizes the recent progress in the carbonization of both natural and regenerated silk, emphasizing the stabilization process, carbonization mechanisms, structural evolution, and the influence of processing parameters on graphitic ordering, porosity, and electrical conductivity. Strategies for enhancing the functional properties of silk-based carbon materials, including catalytic graphitization, chemical activation, nanomaterial incorporation, and heteroatom doping, are also discussed here. This review also emphasizes the performance of carbonized silk fabric for its applications in biomedical devices, solar steam generation, wearable electronics, electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding, energy storage, electrocatalysis, and triboelectric nanogenerators. Finally, the current challenges in scalability, reproducibility, mechanical performance, and sustainable practices are discussed, along with future research directions. Therefore, this review provides an overall comprehensive understanding of silk-based carbon fibers and fabrics and their potential as sustainable, multifunctional carbon platforms for next-generation advanced technologies.