Electrospinning of well-aligned fiber bundles using an End-point Control Assembly method

• We devised the EpCA (End-point Control Assembly) to improve electrospinning process.
• The EpCA can control deposition of electrospun bundles of fibers accurately.
• Well-aligned bundles of fibers of various types of polymer fibers are obtained.
• The results suggest the fabrication for uniaxial nanofibers-based composites.

Electrospinning is a simple and versatile method to fabricate microfibers and nanofibers composed of various materials, such as polymers melts and their solutions. A great challenge in electrospinning is the positioning controllability of fiber deposition on a substrate. This paper describes a simple yet effective method to fabricate well-aligned electrospun fibers that are deposited accurately across a large target. A cylindrical collector rotating at high speed was used to collect the deposited fibers; two curved-dielectric films were installed at a distance of 1 mm from the collector to redirect the air flow generated by the motion of the collector and to intensify the electrostatic field at desired area having the width of several hundred micros to several millimeters. Several types of polymer solutions with different behaviors in electrospinning were used to verify the proposed method. The simulation results of the electrical field revealed that the electrical field intensified at the desired positions on the collector. The experimental results showed significant improvements in both the alignment and positioning controllability of electrospun fibers compared with conventional electrospinning with a rotating cylindrical collector. This method can improve the capability of electrospinning processes in fabricating structures composed of aligned micro/nanofibers to amplify a specific characteristic, such as piezoelectricity.

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