Electrospinning core-sheath, hollow, porous and surface-functionalized nanofibers as aligned arrays and utile architectures

摘要

Electrospinning is a simple and inexpensive technique for the production of fibers with nanoscale diameters and long lengths. Traditionally this method is used to create randomly-oriented non-woven mats of organic fibers from polymer solutions or melts. By co-spinning sol-gel precursors with an ethanol soluble polymer, we have extended this system to spin composite fibers with excellent size control down to tens of nanometers. Additionally, we have made two important modifications to the electrospinning setup. Using a coaxial spinneret, we have been able to manufacture porous, hollow and coresheath nanofibers and control the surface chemistry of those resultant fibers by tuning the core and sheath solutions. We have also used patterned collectors to uniaxially align arrays of nanofibers. These arrays could be readily stacked into structures for device fabrication. This talk will cover these advances, concentrating on the fabrication of functional fibers and architectures relevant to nanoscale devices.