Magnetic-field-assisted electrospinning of aligned straight and wavy polymeric nanofibers.

Abstract

Electrospinning has emerged as a very attractive approach to the fabrication of nanometer (nm)- and submicron-sized fibers.[1–6] Nanofibers generated using the electrospinning technique have been explored for a wide range of applications such as tissue engineering and bioassay,[5, 7–13] sensing,[14, 15] textile,[16] filtration,[17] electrode,[18] and catalyst supports.[19] In many of these cases, the ability to control the alignment and arrangement of fibers is critical to achieve the designed functions, particularly for tissue engineering that requires the release of proteins and growth factors in a guided fashion.[20–22] Improvements in fiber quality has been achieved in recent year through the optimization of electrospinning conditions and oriented fiber arrays can be produced using either rotating collectors or patterned electrodes.[1, 23–26] Furthermore, when magnetic nanoparticles are mixed with polymers, aligned fibers can also be fabricated.[27]