Читать книгу Applications of Polymer Nanofibers - Группа авторов - Страница 36

Electrospinning is a versatile method to fabricate nanofibers from a polymer solution by a high‐voltage electrostatic force. This technique was initially invented by Formhals in 1930s (Anton 1934). It was not until the late twentieth century, electrospinning was being massively investigated for nanofiber fabrication. Electrospinning setup generally consists of a syringe pump, a collector, and a high‐voltage supply. A polymer solution is placed in a syringe, squeezed from the spinneret, meanwhile, stretched by the electrostatic force provided by a high‐voltage power supply, shown in Figure 2.1 (Zhu et al. 2016). At last, nanometer‐scaled fibers are able to be gathered on the collector (Vitchuli et al. 2010).

The electrospinning method is appropriate for a variety of polymers, including nylon (PA), polyurethanes (PU), polybenzimidazole (PBI), polycarbonate (PC), polyacrylonitrile (PAN), polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), polylactic acid (PLA), polyethylene‐co‐vinyl acetate, polyethylene oxide (PEO), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polystyrene (PS), polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), polyvinyl phenol, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), cellulose acetate, polycaprolactone (PCL), polyacrylamide, poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF), polyether imide, polyethylene glycol, polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP), as well as the combination of different polymers with/without inorganic compounds (Vitchuli et al. 2010; Zhu et al. 2016, 2015; Ge et al. 2017). In addition, the structure of resultant nanofibers can be varied according to the spinneret design, such as hollow structure and core–sheath structure (Zhang et al. 2015; Gimenez‐Lopez et al. 2013; Shi et al. 2011; Jiang and Qin 2014).

Figure 2.1 Schematic image of electrospinning setup.

Source: Zhu et al. (2016).

The practical application of electrospinning is limited due to its low production rate. Conventional single‐needle electrospinning brings about low productivity, which cannot meet the high production demand for the industry. Currently, many approaches have been used to improve the production rate by using multiple jets or nozzleless systems, such as bubble solution system (Jiang and Qin 2014; Jiang et al. 2013).