Molecular Orientation in Electrospun Fibers: From Mats to Single Fibers

Richard‐Lacroix, Marie; Pellerin, Christian

doi:10.1021/ma401681m

Cited by 235 publications

(246 citation statements)

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“…10−19 Nevertheless, the controlled production of highly ordered fibers with improved and tunable properties is hampered by our limited comprehension of the structural factors leading to these unusual properties. 8 The foremost hypothesis to explain the exponential diameter dependence of modulus is a higher molecular orientation in smaller fibers. Modulus and orientation may be directly correlated, in the simplest scenario, but orientation studies on bundles of fibers have led to conflicting results.…”

Section: ■ Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Orientation and Partial Disentanglement in Individual Electrospun Fibers: Diameter Dependence and Correlation with Mechanical Properties

Richard‐Lacroix

Pellerin

2015

Macromolecules

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Electrospun fibers are versatile materials that exhibit unusual and tunable properties when studied at the single fiber level, including an exponential increase in modulus with a decreasing diameter toward the nanoscale. Understanding the detailed molecular organization giving rise to this behavior is a key for reaching the ultimate goal of controlling their properties and realizing their full potential as 1D materials. In particular, molecular orientation and chain disentanglement are thought to play a critical role, but their study in individual fibers has proven extremely challenging. Here, we quantify molecular orientation in more than 100 individual fibers of atactic polystyrene (PS) from the micro-to nanoscale by polarized Raman spectroscopy, and we probe for the first time a disentanglement-related conformation in the same spectra. We observe an exponential increase of both parameters when decreasing the fiber diameter below an impressively large onset of 2.5 μm, much larger than the typical onset values. The orientation quantified for 500 nm fibers is among the highest values ever reported for PS samples. A clear correlation is found with the previously published diameter dependence of modulus measured in individual PS fibers. Our results also highlight the longitudinal and radial structural heterogeneity of electrospun fibers and suggest separate mechanisms for molecular orientation and disentanglement, which is shown to be mainly situated in the fiber shell. Finally, we combine our observations in a model describing the evolution of chain organization with fiber diameter.

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Section: ■ Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Orientation and Partial Disentanglement in Individual Electrospun Fibers: Diameter Dependence and Correlation with Mechanical Properties

Richard‐Lacroix

Pellerin

2015

Macromolecules

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“…Li et al [13] have studied the interaction between five differently shaped nanoparticles, buckyball, graphene, nanodiamond (ND), and X-shaped and Y-shaped junctions, at a fixed volume fraction (4 vol.%) with polyethylene (PE) matrix and shown that the interaction between graphene sheets and PE matrix is the strongest among all the nanoparticles due to the largest aspect ratio of graphene; correspondingly, the relaxation time of PE chains is the longest. An increase in the relaxation time of polymer chains in the nanocomposite promotes orientation of polymer chains in the electrospinning process, which results in improved mechanical properties [27].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aligned poly(ε-caprolactone)/graphene oxide and reduced graphene oxide nanocomposite nanofibers: Morphological, mechanical and structural properties

Ramazani

Karimi

2015

Materials Science and Engineering: C

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“…Despite the potential utilization of electrospun nanofibers in many fields, their success has been limited so far due to their poor mechanical properties compared to those of fibers made by conventional processes such as melt-or solution spinning [4][5][6][7][8][9]. The main reason for this is the competition between flow-induced chain orientation and chain relaxation before fiber solidification, leading to low degrees of molecular orientation in as-spun fibers based on flexible chain polymer fibers [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High-performance electrospun co-polyimide nanofibers

Pantano

Pugno

Bastiaansen

et al. 2015

Polymer

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Abstract. Co-polyimide nanofiber based on BPDA (3, 30, 4, 40-Biphenyltetracarboxylic dianhydride)/PDA (p-Phenylene-diamine)/ODA (4, 40-Oxydianiline) (BPO) were produced by electrospinning followed by imidization from precursor polyamic acid (PAA) nanofiber. The aligned co-polyimide nanofiber mats possessed a modulus, strength and strain-at-break of respective 10 GPa, 1.04 GPa, and 13.5%. In comparison with previously reported co-polyimide nanofibers BPDA/BPA/ODA (BBO) with similar chemical structures, these BPO co-polyimide nanofibers can be as stiff and strong while at the same time exhibiting moderate ductility. On the other hand, the current BPO co-polyimide nanofibers exhibited a greater toughness than previously reported homo-polyimide (BPDA/PDA) nanofibers due to their relatively high strain-at-break, leading to similar levels of toughness as Kevlar fibers. A novel and efficient way to evaluate mechanical properties of aligned nanofiber bundles (~30 nanofibers in a bundle) by virtue of a micro-tensile tester was also reported. Young's modulus of 38 ± 2 GPa and tensile strength of 1550 ± 70 MPa were found for nanofiber bundles and were significantly higher than those of aligned mats, and are among the highest reported for electrospun fibers. Further evaluation of this bundle data using Daniel's theory based on Weibull statistics resulted in a predicted tensile strength of single copolyimide nanofibers of about 1.9 GPa.

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Molecular Orientation in Electrospun Fibers: From Mats to Single Fibers

Cited by 235 publications

References 205 publications

Orientation and Partial Disentanglement in Individual Electrospun Fibers: Diameter Dependence and Correlation with Mechanical Properties

Orientation and Partial Disentanglement in Individual Electrospun Fibers: Diameter Dependence and Correlation with Mechanical Properties

Aligned poly(ε-caprolactone)/graphene oxide and reduced graphene oxide nanocomposite nanofibers: Morphological, mechanical and structural properties

High-performance electrospun co-polyimide nanofibers

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