Jet motion and fiber properties arising from a parallel electric field in melt-electrospinning

Abstract

It is well known that the electric field has a great influence on the diameter and properties of fiber prepared via the melt-electrospinning technique. In this paper, two parallel metal discs were introduced to create a controllable electric field in the experiments. In addition, a three-dimensional electric field was calculated by the numerical simulation method and the jet motion was captured by taking advantage of high-speed photography technology. The influences of electric field distribution on the fiber jet, fiber diameter, fiber mat area and fiber crystallinity were studied in an in-depth and systematical manner. Both whipping amplitude and whipping frequency were also used to describe the characteristics of the jet. The above-mentioned results have proven that increasing the distance between the two parallel metal discs leads to the decrease of electric field intensity and the increase of electric field action time on the fiber, which together determine the diameter and crystallinity of the fiber. With the increase of the outer diameter of the upper disc, the distribution of the electric field becomes more uniform, making it capable of steadily controlling the behavior of the jet, and thus effectively reducing the diameter of the fiber and improving the crystallinity of the fiber.