Preparation of poly(ether sulfone) nanofibers by gas‐jet/electrospinning

Abstract

Poly(ether sulfone) (PES) nanofibers were prepared by the gas-jet/electrospinning of its solutions in N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF). The gas used in this gasjet/electrospinning process was nitrogen. The morphology of the PES nanofibers was investigated with scanning electron microscopy. The process parameters studied in this work included the concentration of the polymer solution, the applied voltage, the tip-collector distance (TCD), the inner diameter of the needle, and the gas flow rate. It was found from experimental results that the average diameter of the electrospun PES fibers depended strongly on these process parameters. A decrease in the polymer concentration in the spinning solutions resulted in the formation of nanofibers with a smaller diameter. The use of an 18 wt % polymer solution yielded PES nanofibers with an average diameter of about 80 nm. However, a morphology of mixed bead fibers was formed when the concentration of PES in DMF was below 20 wt % during gas-jet/electrospinning. Uniform PES nanofibers with an average diameter of about 200 nm were prepared by this electrospinning with the following optimal process parameters: the concentration of PES in DMF was 25 wt %, the applied voltage was 28.8 kV, the gas flow was 10.0 L/min, the inner diameter of the needle was 0.24 mm, the TCD was 20 cm, and the flow rate was 6.0 mL/h.

Increased production of nanofibrous materials by electroblowing from blends of hyaluronic acid and polyethylene oxide

“…The decrease in fiber diameters with increased airflow was confirmed through experiments carried out by the authors of Ref. 20. The awarded patents also prove the feasibility of upscaling electroblowing and its industrial use [21][22][23].…”

A review on electrospun bio-based polymers for water treatment

“…It necessitates a gas jet device connected to the needle and is known as the gas-jet electrospinning technique [13,15,[116][117][118]. In this technique the needle of the spinning solution is encircled by the tube of the gas jet.…”

“…In this technique the needle of the spinning solution is encircled by the tube of the gas jet. Lin et al [116] studied the effect of ID and gas flow rate while keeping the other parameters fixed. They found that a smaller ID led to smaller average diameters, while the average diameter decreased monotonically as the gas flow rate increased.…”

Steady state electrospinning of uniform polyethersulfone nanofibers using a non-heated solvent mixture

“…For this reason, PES is often used as a membrane material in the biotechnological and pharmaceutical industries (Xu and Alsalhy Qusay 2004;Rahimpour et al 2010). Electrospinning of PES is mostly performed with single solvents such as dimethylformamide (DMF) and dimethylacetamide (DMAc) (Lin et al 2008;Babaeijandaghi et al 2010;Homaeigohar et al 2010), although solvent mixtures such as DMF:toluene (Ma et al 2009) or DMF:NMP (Yoon et al 2009;Tang et al 2009;Bui et al 2011) have also been attempted. The use of heated mixtures such as DMF:NMP solution is mainly aimed at wet spinning of PES nanofibers onto a carrier.…”

“…The effect of different electrospinning parameters on the steady state was investigated and the formed nanofibers characterized. Currently, the literature describes electrospun PES fiber diameters with standard deviations ranging from 35 % to more than 50 % (Lin et al 2008;Ma et al 2009;Tang et al 2009;Homaeigohar et al 2010;Bui et al 2011). We also investigated whether the PES electrospun under steady state conditions gives more uniform nanofibers' diameters.…”