Electrospinning of uniform polystyrene fibers: The effect of solvent conductivity

Abstract

By means of the electrospinning technique, micron- and nanofibers can be obtained from polymer solutions under a very high electrical field. A special challenge is to produce bead-free uniform fibers since any minor changes in the electrospinning parameters such as slight variations in the polymer solutions and/or electrospinning experimental parameters may result in significant variations in the final nanofiber morphology. Furthermore, it is often not trivial at all to obtain reproducible uniform electrospun nanofibers for the optimized electrospinning conditions. Here we report that the conductivity of the solvent is the key factor for the reproducible electrospinning of uniform polystyrene (PS) fibers from dimethylformamide (DMF) solutions. It is shown that even slight changes in the conductivity of the DMF solutions can greatly affect the morphology of the resulting electrospun PS fibers. Here, we have carried out a thorough and systematic study on the effect of solution conductivity on the electrospinning of bead-free polystyrene (PS) fibers when dimethylformamide (DMF) was used as the solvent. Interestingly, we found out that different grades of solvent as-received (DMF) from various suppliers have slightly different solution conductivities. Consequently, the polymer solutions prepared with the same PS concentration have different conductivities, which are shown to have significant changes on the morphology of the PS fibers resulting in beaded or bead-free uniform fibers when electrospun under the identical electrospinning conditions. Such as, bead-free PS fibers were obtained from PS solutions in the range of 20% (w/v) through 30% (w/v) depending on the DMF grade used. In brief, it was observed that solutions with a higher conductivity yielded bead-free fibers from lower polymer concentrations, which confirms that the solution conductivity plays a very significant role in producing bead-free uniform PS fibers.