#electrospinning

Could clothing monitor a person's health in real time, because the clothing itself would be a self-powered sensor? A new material created through electrospinning, which is a process that draws out fibers using electricity, brings this possibility one step closer. A team led by researchers at Penn State has developed a new fabrication approach that optimizes the internal structure of electrospun fibers to improve their performance in electronic applications. The team has published its findings in the Journal of Applied Physics.

A reusable, washable nanofiber membrane can filter water sustainably

The antimicrobial triclosan is widely used in personal hygiene products, textiles and plastics, but when it enters the environment via wastewater, it poses a significant threat to aquatic organisms. A Cornell research group has developed a cyclodextrin-based fibrous membrane that in lab testing removed approximately 90% of triclosan from water. Their washable and reusable nanofiber material, fabricated via electrospinning—a process that uses an electric field to draw ultra-thin fibers from a liquid—also effectively removed other micropollutants. "The electrospinning produces a very thin fiber, less than 1 micron in diameter (a human hair is approximately 75 microns), which gives us high surface area and excellent adsorption," said Mahmoud Aboelkheir, doctoral student in human centered design and lead author of the work.

How To Fabricate A Graphene Oxide (GO) Thin-film Nanofibrous Composite Membranes By Electrospinning Nanofibers Equipment?

 #graphene #oxide #GO #thinfilm #nanofibrous #composite #membranes #electrospinning #nanofibers #equipment #tunable #nanochannels #nanopores #highly #porous #support #nanosheets #mat #TFNC

Electrospinning of a multifibrillar polyacrylonitrile fibre. Image credit: University of Bayreuth/Rennecke.

By Anthony Caggiano

University of Beyreuth, Germany, researchers have developed lightweight and strong polymer fibres through electrospinning.

Polyacrylonitrile is the chemical base of the fibre, of which a single one with a diameter of about 40,000nm consists of up to 4,000 ultra-thin fibrils.

One individual fibre is as thin as a human hair and can lift a weight of 30g without tearing  – working out to about 150,000 times the weight of a fruit fly.

These fibrils are linked by small amounts of an additive, poly(ethylene glycol) bisazide (PEG-BA). Three-dimensional X-ray images show that the fibrils within the fibre are almost always arranged in the same longitudinal direction.

Bayreuth Polymer Scientist, Seema Agarwal, explained the process.

‘We prepared these multifibrillar polyacrylonitrile fibres in a laboratory for electrospinning at the University of Bayreuth and extensively tested them for their properties and behaviour. Their unique strength in combination with high toughness never ceased to fascinate us,’ Agarwal said.

Beyreuth Macromolecular Chemistry II research group leader, Andreas Greiner, said, ‘experiments on the high tensile strength of these fibres have furthermore revealed their high toughness. This means that each individual fibre can absorb a lot of energy.’

The overall properties were comparable to those of spider silk.

The researchers claim the polymer fibres are suited to technical components that are exposed to high loads. They enable innovative applications in a wide variety of fields, for example in textiles, aerospace, automotive engineering, or medical technology. 

The fibres are also recyclable.

Other partners in the project were researchers at the Forschungszentrum Jülich, the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, the Fraunhofer-Institute for Microstructure of Materials and Systems (IMWS), the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen University, the Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang, and ETH Zürich.

Chemists create world's thinnest spaghetti

The world's thinnest spaghetti, about 200 times thinner than a human hair, has been created by a UCL-led research team. The spaghetti is not intended to be a new food but was created because of the wide-ranging uses that extremely thin strands of material, called nanofibers, have in medicine and industry. Nanofibers made of starch—produced by most green plants to store excess glucose—are especially promising and could be used in bandages to aid wound healing (as the nanofiber mats are highly porous, allowing water and moisture in but keeping bacteria out), as scaffolding for bone regeneration and for drug delivery. However, they rely on starch being extracted from plant cells and purified, a process requiring much energy and water. A more environmentally friendly method, the researchers say, is to create nanofibers directly from a starch-rich ingredient like flour, which is the basis for pasta.