Impact of the solvent composition on the structural and mechanical properties of customizable electrospun poly(vinylpyrrolidone) fiber mats

Abstract

The performance of fibrous membrane composites fabricated via electrospinning is strongly influenced by the solution’s properties, process variables and ambient conditions, although a precise mechanism for controlling the properties of...

Improving glass‐fiber epoxy composites via interlayer toughening with polyacrylonitrile/multiwalled carbon nanotubes electrospun fibers

“…The latter effect has been extensively discussed in the literature, and commonly appears when the polymeric precursor solution did not have the adequate elasticity to stretch its polymer chains by the electric force 21,23,34 . Additionally, we also observed slight differences in the fiber morphologies/structures and fiber diameters when the PAN wt% content is kept constant, but we changed the operational parameters.…”

“…The manufacture of electrospun fibers and their properties are largely influenced by: operating parameters, physico‐chemical properties of the polymer‐solution precursor, and environmental conditions, as was pointed out in ref. 23. Therefore, finding optimal scenarios with good quality fibers are often expensive and time‐consuming.…”

“…Similarly, the carbon nanotubes/polymer mixtures were fabricated as follows. First, a homogenous PAN/DMF solution containing the adequate content of the polymer was prepared following the procedure aforementioned 23,32 . According to the TM, the optimal content of the polymer was set at 12 wt% and therefore all the PAN/MWCNTs fibers were prepared by keeping this concentration constant.…”

“…The onset voltage was obtained following the recommendation proposed in ref. 23 it was adjusted slightly for each sample in order to reach a stable Taylor cone and varies from 11 to 20 kV. The fiber mats were obtained after 3 h. All electrospun fibers were produced at room temperature and relative humidity of 50%.…”

“…The resulting material's performance, properties and structures will be modulated by changing the physicochemical features of the viscoelastic precursor solution, the experimental variables (such as the intensity of the electric field, flow speed, etc.) and the environmental conditions including temperature and humidity 20–23 . In this context, Bilge et al fabricated carbon‐epoxy composite laminates incorporated poly(styrene‐co‐glycidal methacrylate) P(St‐co‐GMA) nanofibers by crosslinking with phthalic anhydride (PA) as a crosslinker and tributylamine (TBA) as an initiator, and demonstrated up to 39% improvement in tensile strength and elastic modulus compared with the control carbon‐epoxy‐composites 19 .…”