Abstract
Electrospinning (e-spinning) is a versatile technique to fabricate ultrathin fibers from a rich variety of functional materials. In this paper, a modified e-spinning setup with two-frame collector is proposed for the fabrication of highly aligned arrays of polystyrene (PS) and polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) nanofibers, as well as PVDF/carbon nanotube (PVDF/CNT) composite fibers. Especially, it is capable of producing fibrous arrays with excellent orientation over a large area (more than 14 cm × 12 cm). The as-spun fibers are suspended and can be easily transferred to other rigid or flexible substrates. Based on the aligned fibrous arrays, twisted long ropes are also prepared. Compared with the aligned arrays, twisted PVDF/CNT fiber ropes show enhanced mechanical and electrical properties and have potential application in microscale strain sensors.
Highlights
Electrospinning (e-spinning) is a simple and versatile technique to fabricate fibers with diameters typically ranging from a few micrometers down to 10 nm or less
We report on a novel e-spinning device with a set of a modified frame collector, by which highly ordered arrays of polystyrene (PS) and polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) nanofibers, as well as PVDF/multiwall carbon nanotube (CNT) (MWCNT) composite nanofibers, can be fabricated
We investigated the sensitivity of the 16.7 wt% PVDF/CNT sensor on different bending radiuses of 3.4, 6.6, and 8.7 cm
Summary
Electrospinning (e-spinning) is a simple and versatile technique to fabricate fibers with diameters typically ranging from a few micrometers down to 10 nm or less. In order to extend the potential applications of e-spinning, a lot of modified e-spinning techniques have been proposed to obtain fibers with desired morphologies such as aligned fibrous arrays and twisted ropes. Aligned fibers can be prepared by introducing a gap into the conventional collector [10], adding an auxiliary electric or magnetic field [11], double spinning, [12] nearfield e-spinning [13,14,15,16,17,18], and rotating collector [19]. Twisted fiber bundles have been fabricated by a few means such as dual collection rings [20], AC e-spinning [21], a modified setup with two collectors [22], or with an alternating electric field [23]. There are few methods by which both well-aligned fibers and twisted ropes can be fabricated
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