title: Novel, Facile, Single-Step Technique of Polymer/TiO₂ Nanofiber Composites Membrane for Photodegradation of Methylene Blue.
abstract: Novel photocatalyst membrane materials were successfully fabricated by an air jet spinning (AJS) technique from polyvinyl acetate (PVAc) solutions containing nanoparticles (NPs) of titanium dioxide (TiO2). Our innovative strategy for the production of composite nanofibers is based on stretching a solution of polymer with a high-speed compressed air jet. This enabled us to rapidly cover different substrates with TiO2/PVAc interconnected nanofibers. Surprisingly, the diameters of the as-spun fibers were found to decrease with increasing amount of NPs. Our results showed that AJS PVAc-based fibrous membranes with average fiber diameters of 505-901 nm have an apparent porosity of about 79-93% and a mean pore size of 1.58-5.12 μm. Embedding NPs onto the as-spun fibers resulted in increasing the tensile strength of the obtained composite fiber mats. The photodegradation property of TiO2 membrane mats proved a high efficiency in the decomposition of methylene blue dye. The novel fiber spinning technique discussed in this paper can provide the capacity to lace together a variety of types of polymers, fibers and particles to produce interconnected fibers layer. Our approach, therefore, opens the door for the innovation in nanocomposite mat that has great potential as efficient and economic water filter media and as reusable photocatalyst.
authors.affiliation: †Department of Engineering Materials and Mechanical Design, Faculty of Engineering, South Valley of University, Qena 83523, Egypt.|‡Department of Bionano System Engineering, College of Engineering, Chonbuk National University, Jeonju 561-756, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Abdalla
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Abdal-hay
authors.affiliation: §Department of Manufacturing Engineering, College of Engineering and Computer Science, University of Texas Pan-American, 1201 West University Drive, Edinburg, Texas 78541-2999, United States.
authors.forename: Abdel Salam Hamdy
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Makhlouf
authors.affiliation: ∥Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, King Saud University, Riyadh 11421, Saudi Arabia.|⊥Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Energy Engineering, Aswan University, Aswan, Egypt.
authors.forename: Khalil Abdelrazek
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Khalil
keywords: nanocomposite membrane; nanofilter; polymer/TiO2nanofibers; water treatment