Optimization of the electrospinning processing‐window to fabricate nanostructured PE‐b‐PEO and hybrid PE‐b‐PEO/EBBA fibers

Abstract

An electrospinning technique is used to obtain poly(ethylene‐b‐ethylene oxide) block copolymer (PE‐b‐PEO) fibers. Optimization of the electrospinning processing‐window is carried out by varying the concentration of the block copolymer solution and playing with three different electrospinning parameters, applied voltage, solvent and block copolymer solution flow rate. The influence of the concentration of the block copolymer solution over the length and diameter of the fibers is mainly studied and results indicate that the optimum conditions to fabricate PE‐b‐PEO block copolymer fibers are concentrations between 45 and 47 wt% of PE‐b‐PEO block copolymer and chloroform/DMF mixture ratio of 4:1 and 5:1. Moreover, low solvent and block copolymer solution flow rates led to the longest and widest fibers. Hybrid fibers are also fabricated modifying PE‐b‐PEO block copolymer fibers with low molecular weight N‐(4‐ethoxybenzylidene)−4‐butylaniline (EBBA) nematic liquid crystal using coaxial electrospinning technique. The morphology of the fabricated fibers is investigated from micro to nanoscale. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) results show self‐organization of investigated PE‐b‐PEO and hybrid PE‐b‐PEO/EBBA fibers on the nanometric scale, which make them interesting from the point of view of novel applications as template materials. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 57:1157–1167, 2017. © 2017 Society of Plastics Engineers