Production Nozzle-Less Electrospinning Nanofiber Technology
- PDF / 657,064 Bytes
- 12 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
- 53 Downloads / 294 Views
1240-WW03-07
Production Nozzle-Less Electrospinning Nanofiber Technology Stanislav Petrik and Miroslav Maly Elmarco s.r.o. V Horkach 76/18, CZ-46007 Liberec, Czech Republic ABSTRACT The theoretical background and technical capabilities of the free liquid surface (nozzleless) electrospinnig process is described. The process is the basis of both laboratory and industrial production machines known as NanospiderTM and developed by Elmarco s.r.o. Technical capabilities of the machines (productivity, nanofiber layer metrics, and quality) are described in detail. Comparison with competing/complementary technologies is given, e.g. nozzle electrospinning, nano-meltblown, and islets-in-the sea. Application fields for nanofiber materials produced by various methods are discussed. Consistency of the technology performance and production capabilities are demonstrated using an example of polyamide nanofiber air filter media.
INTRODUCTION Electrospinning methods for creating nanofibers from polymer solutions have been known for decades [1, 2]. The nozzle-less (free liquid surface) technology opened new economically viable possibilities to produce nanofiber layers in a mass industrial scale, and was developed in the past decade [3]. Hundreds of laboratories are currently active in the research of electrospinning process, nanofiber materials, and their applications. Nanofiber nonwovenstructured layers are ideal for creating novel composite materials by combining them with usual nonwovens. The most developed application of this kind of materials is air filtration [4]. liquid filters and separators are being developed intensively with very encouraging results. Also well known are several bio-medical applications utilizing nanofiber materials, often from biocompatible/degradable polymers like PLA, gelatine, collagen, chitosan. These developing applications include wound care, skin-, vessel-, bone- scaffolds, drug delivery systems and many others. [3, 5]. Inorganic/ceramic nanofibers attract growing interest as materials for energy generation and storage (solar and fuel cells, batteries), and catalytic materials [6-10]. To fully explore the extraordinary number of application opportunities of nanofibers, the availability of reliable industrial-level production technology is essential. This paper intends to demonstrate that the technology has matured to this stage.
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND The electrospinning process is an interesting and well-characterized physical phenomenon and has been an attractive subject for theoretical investigations of several groups [9, 11-17, 1, 2]. Most work concentrates on the essentials of the process – the nanofiber formation from a liquid polymer jet in a (longitudinal) electric field. It has been theoretically described and experimentally proven that the dominant mechanism is whipping elongation occurring due to bending instability [13, 16, 17]. Secondary splitting of the liquid polymer streams can occur also [1], but the final thinning process is elongation. In Figure 1, the schematic of bending mecha
Data Loading...
