Improving adhesion of electrospun nanofiber mats to supporting substrate by using adhesive bonding

Inadequate strength of electrospun nanofibrous mats is one of the main barriers to use them in many applications such as protective clothing and filtration. In order to overcome this problem, the nanofibers are deposited on a supporting substrate. Hence, enhancing the adhesion between the nanofibrous mat and the supporting substrate and also between the nanofibers in order to avoid delamination is an important concern. In the present research to fulfil the requirements, a method was introduced to improve the adhesion between nylon 66 nanofibrous mat and the supporting substrate. For this purpose, nylon 66 nanofibers were blended with PVAc nanofibers as a hot melt adhesive in opposite charged nozzles set up (nozzles with opposite charge) in electrospinning process. Subsequently, thermal treatment was carried out for 78 s on samples in various temperatures. The results show that this approach is significantly efficient to avoid delemination of nanofibers from the substrate. The adhesion strength in hybrid samples was improved up to 14 times more than nylon 66 nanofiber samples even without applying heat treatment. FTIR analysis was applied to investigate chemical composition of the hybrid sample after heat treatment.