A Modified Electro-Centrifugal Spinning Method to Enhance the Production Rate of Highly Aligned Nanofiber

Abstract

In this paper, for the aim of increasing the production rate of highly aligned nanofibers, electrocentrifuge spinning (ECS) technique was modified by equipping it with two nozzles as the spinneret. This new setup obviously doubles the production rate of nanofibers relative to the conventional ECS. To investigate the effect of this modification on the degree of nanofibers alignment (DeNA), the values of DeNA were measured for 30 distinctive experiments and the results were compared with that of ECS setup with a single nozzle. The originality of this work has lain in the fact that for these 30 experiments, which were designed by Design Expert Software (DES), the DeNA of the new ECS was the same as the conventional setup. Additionally, a spinneret with four nozzles was employed to evaluate the influence of number of nozzles on the DeNA. Lastly, the optimum values of voltage, polymer concentration, spinneret rotational speed and collector diameter were determined in order to maximize the DeNA of the modified ECS setup.