Fabrication of Si-nozzles for parallel mechano-electrospinning direct writing

Abstract

Nozzles with micro-scale orifices drive high-resolution printing techniques for generating micro- to nano-scale droplets/lines. This paper presents the fabrication and application of Si-nozzles in mechano-electrospinning (MES). The fabrication process mainly consists of photolithography, Au deposition, inductively coupled plasma, and polydimethylsiloxane encapsulation. The 6 wt% polyethylene oxide solution is adopted to study the electrospinning behaviour and the relations between fibre diameter and process parameters in MES. A fibre grid with 250 µm spacing is able to be direct written, and the diameters are less than 3 µm. To improve the printing efficiency, positioning accuracy and flexibility, a rotatable multi-nozzle is adopted. The distance between parallel lines reduces sharply from 4.927 to 0.308 mm with the rotating angle increasing from 0° to 87°, and the fibre grids with tunable distance are achieved. This method paves the way for fabrication of addressable Si-nozzle array in parallel MES direct writing.