Gas flow-assisted alignment of super long electrospun nanofibers.
Electrospinning provides a simple and versatile method for generating ultra thin fibers with diameters ranging from nanometer to micron out of various materials. However, there are still challenges in the alignment of electrospun nanofibers, which is an important step toward the exploitation of these fibers in applications. In this letter, we report a method using the gas flow to assist the alignment of electrospun nanofibers, which can form well-aligned super long polymeric nanofibers over large areas with the length of more than 20 cm. The improved collector is built by coupling a "T"-shaped electrode and a rectangle electrode, and it can make the electrospun nanofiber form a fixed site at the "T"-shaped electrode under the electric field and make it possible to use an assisting gas flow (AGF) to draw the other part of the nanofiber to fly toward the upside of the rectangle electrode and obtain well-aligned long nanofibers. These well-aligned long nanofibers can be further applied easily without disturbing the aligned structure, which is convenient for the measurement and device fabrications.
Zhou
Weiping
W
Beijing Key Laboratory of Green Reaction Engineering and Technology, Department of Chemical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, PR China.
Li
Zhifei
Z
Zhang
Qiang
Q
Liu
Yanping
Y
Wei
Fei
F
Luo
Guohua
G
D003460:Crystallization; D004563:Electrochemistry / Q000379:methods*; D004566:Electrodes; D005740:Gases; D053768:Metal Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry; D008670:Metals / Q000737:chemistry; D008839:Microelectrodes; D008855:Microscopy, Electron, Scanning; D046529:Microscopy, Electron, Transmission; D053758:Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry; D036103:Nanotechnology / Q000379:methods; D010316:Particle Size; D011092:Polyethylene Glycols / Q000737:chemistry; D011108:Polymers / Q000737:chemistry; D013499:Surface Properties
D005740:Gases; D008670:Metals; D011108:Polymers; D011092:Polyethylene Glycols