A facile bottom-up route to self-assembled biogenic chitin nanofibers

A facile bottom-up strategy affords cytocompatible self-assembled biogenic chitin nanofibers with diameter control. Ultrafine (3 nm) nanofibers are easily obtained from drying a chitin/hexafluoro 2-propanol solution, and larger (10 nm) nanofibers are precipitated from LiCl/N, N-dimethylacetamide upon addition of water.