A facile approach for the preparation of polycarbonate nanofiber mat with filtration capability.

Abstract

The present day environmental issues demand a lot from scientists and engineers to keep the planet earth safe for its habitats. There were lot of attempts for developing efficient air and liquid filters as the demand increases with an utmost concern of present environmental situations. Thanks to its large surface area to volume ratio, polymer nanofibers and composites are found to be good substitute for conventional filters. As per the research and analysis data, filtration efficiency increases proportional to the reduction of the average diameter of the fibers. In this study, the most efficient electrospinning technology was adopted to prepare polycarbonate (PC) nanofiber mat which yields a very fine surface morphology. There are earlier researches and associated data available about the preparation of PC nanofibers but with average fiber diameter above 1000 nm. In this study, a systematic methodology was instigated to generate PC nanofibers with least average diameter of 90 nm without using any surfactants or salts. The most suitable solvents, solvent proportion, polymer concentration and electrospinning conditions for the formation of the fiber mat are discussed elaborately. PC fiber mat of least average diameter was proved to be highly efficient for particulate matter adsorption using a dust sampling analyzer.