Effects of electrospinning conditions on microstructural properties of polystyrene fibrous materials

Abstract

The mathematical model developed by Reneker et al. [J. Appl. Phys. 87, 4531 (2000)] and Yarin et al. [J. Appl. Phys. 89(5), 3018–3026 (2001)] for modeling filament formation in electrospinning is combined in this work with the structure generation algorithm of Venkateshan et al. [Mater. Des. 96, 27–35 (2016)] to simulate the effects of electrospinning parameters on microstructural properties (i.e., fiber diameter, thickness, and porosity) of the resulting electrospun materials. The model is calibrated using the experimental data obtained from electrospinning polystyrene (PS) fibers. The computational tool developed in this work allows one to study the effects of electrospinning parameters, such as voltage, needle-to-collector distance (NCD), or PS concentration, on the thickness and porosity of the resulting fibrous materials. For instance, it was shown that increasing the voltage or decreasing the NCD in electrospinning polystyrene results in mats with thicker fibers but smaller dimensionless thickness (or lower porosities), in agreement with experimental observations reported in the literature. In addition to serving as a characterization tool for the electrospun materials, the computational model developed in this work can be used to create accurate representations of the surface morphology or the internal geometry of fibrous materials used in a variety of applications, such as particle filtration or droplet separation.