Uniform electric field enabled multi-needles electrospinning head based on trapezoid arrangement

Ziming Zhu,Feiyu Fang,Jun Zeng,Peixuan Wu,Guojie Xu,Zhifeng Wang,Yixiang Zhao,Yang Li,Rouxi Chen,Xindu Chen,Jiaxu Huang,Feng Liang,Yunbo He,Han Wang

doi:10.1063/1.5026908

Abstract

The electrospinning electric field is the main factor responsible for the jet stretching force. Previous studies showed that nonhomogeneous electric field would affect the jets formed during the multi-needles electrospinning. Therefore, a multitude of methods were explored to optimize the electric field in multi-needles electrospinning, such as adjusting the supplied voltage on each needle, varying the space of the needles and spatial distribution of the needles. In this paper, three categories of needles distribution were explored for a homogeneous electric field and the design of a higher needles density of electrospinning head. The theoretical and experimental results showed that the homogeneous electric field formed with the trapezoidal head at 15mm distance while the others’ head required over 30mm. Hence, the trapezoidal arrangement is a better multi-needles distribution for electrospinning head, and has much more significance for high yield of electrospinning nanofibers.

Highlights

Electrospinning is a low-cost method to produce nanofibers, which has gained great attention in the last few years.[1,2,3] In conventional electrospinning setups such as auxiliary electrodes in multi-needles electrospinning and centrifugal electrospinning,[4] needles are commonly used as electrospinning heads to fabricate nanofibers, as they can produce uniform, multi-structured, composite/multi-material and controllable nanofibers
Single needle electrospinning is of low yield less than 0.1g/h,5 and here we wish to enhance nanofiber throughput to about 5g/h by a novel technique using multi-needles electrospinning head based on trapezoid arrangement
These results show that a more homogeneous electric field is generated by the TW arrangement

Summary

Introduction

Electrospinning is a low-cost method to produce nanofibers, which has gained great attention in the last few years.[1,2,3] In conventional electrospinning setups such as auxiliary electrodes in multi-needles electrospinning and centrifugal electrospinning,[4] needles are commonly used as electrospinning heads to fabricate nanofibers, as they can produce uniform, multi-structured, composite/multi-material and controllable nanofibers. Recent interest has been focused on high throughput of nanofibers by electrospinning. Single needle electrospinning is of low yield less than 0.1g/h (gramme/hour),[5] and here we wish to enhance nanofiber throughput to about 5g/h by a novel technique using multi-needles electrospinning head based on trapezoid arrangement. Other methods have been developed such as multiple-hole and multiple-channel electrospinning, in which the needless electrospinning is one of the most attractive ones. One limitation of the needless method is the difficulty in obtaining high-quality nanofibers, which limits its industrial applications in air and water filtration.[6,7,8,9,10]

Methods

Results

Conclusion