Electrospinning Academic News

ELECTROSPUN NANOFIBERS FOR WATER TREATMENT 2021-03-15

Electrospinning is a very promising fifiber-forming technology that can generate continuous ultrafifine fifibers with diameters ranging from the nano- to the microscale . Electrospinning has been actively exploited as a facile, versatile, and low-cost technique offering unique capabilities for manufacturing nanofifibers from various solutions, melts, emulsions, or suspensions. Electrospun nanofifibers can be deposited conveniently to form a nonwoven mat possessing an interconnected porous structure, high surface area, high porosity, and light weight. These advantages give electrospun nanofifibers huge potential for dealing with many arising health, environmental, energy, and other challenges.

ELECTROSPUN NANOFIBERS FOR FOOD AND FOOD PACKAGING TECHNOLOGY 2021-03-15

In recent years nanofifibers have drawn considerable attention due to their uniquephysicochemical properties and characteristics in comparison with analogous materials . Electrospinning, as a versatile and effificient method for the fabrication of slender and continuous nanofifibers, possesses various advantages in structure and function . Thus electrospun nanofifibers have been applied in many domains including drug delivery, tissue engineering, energy conversion and storage , sensor carriers, environmental governance, and personal protection . Moreover, cost-effective electrospun nanofifibers also demonstrate huge potential in the food industry in view of these features

MELT ELECTROSPINNING 2021-03-15

Two hundred years ago, a deformation of charged liquid under a high-voltage electrostatic fifield was found, and the liquid was polarized by the process of generating jets, which was called electrostatic atomization. After that, numerous scientifific studies were conducted to discuss the instability of the electrostatic liquid under the action of the electrostatic fifield. Since Formhals invented the electrospinning technique in 1934, electrospun fifibers have been attracting a lot of interest due to their high specifific surface area, long length, and easy setups.The high specifific surface area, high porosity, and other excellent physical and chemical properties of electrospun nanofifibers show a broad application prospect in biomedical sciences, textiles, environmental protection, biochemical protection, effificient fifiltration, and many other fifields.

ELECTRONETTING 2021-03-15

Nanomaterials and nanostructures, as critical factors in the recent advancement of many key technologies, have brought broad technological implications to areas ranging from environment, energy, electricity, national defense, and military projects to health care . Nanomaterials differ from macrosized materials not only in the scale of their characteristic dimensions, but also in their capacity to provide significantly improved performance and new possibilities for various practical applications. One-dimensional (1D) nanoscale materials, such as nanofibers, nanotubes, nanowires, and nanorods, are attracting dramatically increasing interest due to their unique electronic, thermal, mechanical, optical, and chemical properties .

NEEDLE-LESS ELECTROSPINNING 2021-03-15

Electrospinning is an efficient technique widely used for making polymer nanofibers. It is versatile in processing different polymeric materials and controllable in producing nanofibers with consistent morphology and fiber diameter . Electrospun nanofibers have attracted much attention owing to their widespread applications in areas such as tissue engineering, drug delivery, catalysis, sensors, energy conversion and storage, reinforcement, and environmental protection. A conventional electrospinning setup typically comprises a high-voltage power supply, a spinneret (or nozzle), and a collector. A hollow needle (e.g., glass Pasteur pipette or stainless steel syringe needle) is usually used as a nozzle to produce polymer filaments, or jets. During electrospinning, a polymer solution is used as material.

NEAR-FIELD ELECTROSPINNING 2021-03-15

Inkjet printing directly transfers functional materials onto a plate or stereoscopic substrate at room temperature, and does not require a mask-plate or photolithography process. Therefore, this noncontact technology has become a growing focus in the field of micro/nano fabrication. Thanks to these characteristics, inkjet printing technology can meet the developmental demands of precise integration, multifunction composition, and stereoscopic fabrication for micro/nano systems.

CENTRIFUGAL SPINNINGdHIGH RATE PRODUCTION OF NANOFIBERS 2021-03-15

Nanofifibers are one of the most promising nanomaterials because of their flflexibility, large surface area, and ease of modifification. Owing to their superior properties, nanofifibers have played important roles in different applications such as fifiltration, tissue engineering, drug delivery, protective clothing, energy storage, etc. .At this writing, electrospinning is the most commonly used method for fabricating nanofifibers. However, widespread industrial utilization of electrospinning is limited mainly by its low production rate and high-voltage setup requirement. In addition to electrospinning, other alternative nanofifiber production methods have also been investigated, such as melt blowing, bicomponent fifiber spinning, phase separation, template synthesis, and self-assembly.

ELECTROSPUN NANOFIBERS FOR AIR FILTRATION 2021-03-15

Air pollution has become one of the most serious environmental issues, particularly fog and haze pollution, resulting in a growing impact on public health, production effificiency, and even ecosystems. Atmospheric particulate matter (PM) pollution, including solid and liquid particles emitted into the air, is the major noxious form of pollutant, and can cause adverse effects on human health due to its ability to penetrate deep into the lungs and cardiovascular system, causing minor irritation to chronic respiratory and lung cancer and making preexisting heart and lung diseases worse . The major sources of PM pollution are industrial emissions (e.g., mineral powder, coal, and carbon powder), combustion from daily life, intensive road transport, secondary nitrates, and secondary sulfates. Furthermore, certain contaminants attached to PM, such as bacteria, pollen, microorganisms, and viruses, may also badly inflfluence the environment and the aforementioned diseases . For example, accordi

COAXIAL ELECTROSPINNING 2021-03-15

Electrospinning is a very effective technique for fabricating continuous ultrafifine fifibers with diameters down to the micro/nanometer scale from polymers, ceramics, and composites since it was put forward . Compared with other micro/nanosized object fabrication approaches, electrospinning has outstanding advantages of method simplicity, material versatility, easy large area fabrication, high throughput of continuous fifibers, low cost, etc. In addition, the electrospinning technique is also notable for its facile structural tenability of products. By tuning the materials system, solvent, solution concentration, electrostatic fifield strength, collector confifiguration, environmental humidity and temperature, as well as some other parameters, routine electrospinning can generate micro/nanofifibers with cylindrical, ribbon, spindle, porous, and other complex structures. However, the simple single-nozzle electrospinning setup forms just a single flfluid jet, which can generate only a s

MULTINEEDLE ELECTROSPINNING 2021-03-15

According to the basic principle of conventional electrospinning, the formation of nanofifibers mainly depends on the drafting effect of the electric fifield force. The solution jets split from the Taylor cone are drawn, thinned, and then solidifified into nanofifibers. Multineedle electrospinning technology is based on the traditional single-needle electrospinning method, but it uses a combination of multiple needles that are arranged according to a specifific rule set to complete the electrospinning process. In multineedle electrospinning systems, the use of multiple needles can increase the number of Taylor cones formed during the electrospinning process. The Taylor cones may split into more jets under the electric fifield force and thus signifificantly increase the yield of nanofifibers. The development of multineedle electrospinning technology laid the foundation for the methodology and has provided ideas to improve research on the production of electrospun nanofifibers.

NANOFIBROUS STRUCTURES 2021-03-15

Nature is an intriguing inspiration for designing several artifificial functional structures on the microand nanoscales. The capture silk of the cribellate spider Uloborus walckenaerius has a unique fifiberstructure with periodic spindle-knots separated by nanofifibril joints, facilitating continuous condensation and directional collection of water drops around the spindle-knots. Spider webs are a beautiful inspiration for the textile and composite industry. Some spider webs are made up of short irregular strands of randomly arranged fifibers (cobweb), whereas others are regular (orb web). The side-by-side fifiber structure, which is composed of the orthocortex and paracortex adhering to each other, leads to the self-crimping properties of wool fifibers. Natural fifibrous structures on gecko feet enable them to stick and move on a smooth surface. The anisotropic deformation (actuation) of the cell wall takes place by the absorption and desorption of moisture by the matrix. The orientat

Electrospinning of in situ synthesized silica-based and calcium phosphate bioceramics for applications in bone tissue engineering: A review 2021-03-15

In the present study, we developed a novel approach for functionalization of gelatin nanofibers using the plasma method for tissue engineering applications. For this purpose, tannic acid-crosslinked gelatin nanofibers were fabricated with electrospinning, followed by treatment with argon and argon–oxygen plasmas in a vacuum chamber. Samples were evaluated by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy, contact angle (CA) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The biological activity of plasma treated gelatin nanofibers were further investigated by using fibroblasts as cell models. SEM studies showed that the average diameter and the surface morphology of nanofibers did not change after plasma treatment. However, the mean surface roughness (RMS) of samples were increased due to plasma activation. ATR-FTIR spectroscopy demonstrated several new bands on plasma treated fibers related to the pl

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