Effects of Six Processing Parameters on the Size of PCL Fibers Prepared by Melt Electrospinning Writing

Abstract

Melt electrospinning writing is a new and promising method for fabricating micro/nanofibers, which has shown great prospects in the biomedical fields such as 3D printing of porous scaffolds. The diameter of the melt electrospinning writing fiber can determine the resolution of the microstructure; thus, the controllability of the fiber diameter is of great significance to the whole fabrication process. In this paper, an orthogonal design experiment (six factors, three levels) was used to explore the impacts of six melt electrospinning parameters (melt temperature, collector speed, tip-to-collector distance, melt flow rate, voltage, and needle gauge) on the fiber diameter. In this experiment, the diameter of fibers obtained with the designed experimental parameters and conditions varied from 10.30 μm to 20.02 μm. The range analysis of orthogonal test results showed that the melt flow rate was the most important factor influencing the diameter of melt electrospinning writing fiber, while the voltage was the least influential factor. The variance analysis of orthogonal test results showed that melt temperature, collector velocity, tip-to-collector distance and melt flow rate had a significant influence on the diameter of melt electrospinning writing fiber. On the basis of the first-order regression equation, the fiber diameter of poly-ε-caprolactone can be accurately controlled, thus improving the engineering applications of poly-ε-caprolactone.