A simple electrospinning setup with the Arduino board using cigarette filter tip and liquid glue as the source for fabricating fibres

Abstract

This article describes a simple setup of electrospinning using widely available resources. The Arduino board, an electronic platform that is commonly accessible was adapted for a controller. Specifically, recycled parts consisting of plastic gears and a lipstick case were incorporated for the construction of a syringe pump. A cheap DC–DC converter was utilized to provide a high voltage supply for stretching of a polymer solution. In order to test the performance of the setup, we obtained the electrospinning fibres with cigarette filter tips dissolved in acetone and liquid glue. The analysis results indicated the average diameter of fibres ∼3.7 ± 0.5 µm and ∼2.8 ± 0.3 µm, respectively. The whole process of controlling can be automatically conducted by a simple application written in DELPHI 7.0 language. It could serve as a form of research project to improve students’ lab experience.