A modified coaxial electrospinning for preparing fibers from a high concentration polymer solution

Abstract

A new process technology modified from conventional coaxial electrospinning process has been developed to prepare polymer fibers from a high concentration solution. This process involves a pure solvent concentrically surrounding polymer fluid in the spinneret. The concentric spinneret was constructed simply by inserting a metal needle through a high elastic silica gel tube. Two syringe pumps were used to drive the core polymer solution and the sheath solvent. Using polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as the polymer model, which normally has an electrospinnable concentration of 10% w/v in ethanol, it was possible to electrospin 35% w/v of PVP in the same solvent, when pure N, N-dimethylacetamide (DMAc) was used as sheath fluid. The resultant fibers have a smooth surface morphology and good structural uniformity. The diameter of the fibers was 2.0±0.25 µm when the DMAc-to-polymer-solution flow rate ratio was set as 0.1. The process technology reported here opens a new window to tune the polymer fibers obtained by the electrospinning, and is useful for improving productivity of the electrospinning process.