The Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, Atlanta, GA, 30332, USA.
State Key Lab for Modification of Chemical Fibers and Polymer Materials, College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, Donghua University, Shanghai, 201620, P. R. China.
Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2019 Nov 11;58(46):16416-16421. doi: 10.1002/anie.201907876. Epub 2019 Sep 20.
We report a simple method for the photothermal welding of nonwoven mats of electrospun nanofibers by introducing a near-infrared (NIR) dye such as indocyanine green. By leveraging the strong photothermal effect of the dye, the nanofibers can be readily welded at their cross points or even over-welded (i.e., melted and/or fused together) to transform the porous mat into a solid film upon exposure to a NIR laser. While welding at the cross points greatly improves the mechanical strength of a nonwoven mat of nanofibers, melting and fusion of the nanofibers can be employed to fabricate a novel class of photothermal papers for laser writing or printing without chemicals or toner particles. By using a photomask, we can integrate photothermal welding with the gas foaming technique to pattern and then expand nonwoven mats into 3D scaffolds with well-defined structures. This method can be applied to different combinations of polymers and dyes, if they can be co-dissolved in a suitable solvent for electrospinning.
我们报告了一种通过引入近红外（NIR）染料（如吲哚菁绿）来实现静电纺纳米纤维无纺垫光热焊接的简单方法。利用染料的强光热效应，可以在纳米纤维的交叉点处进行焊接，甚至可以进行过焊接（即熔融和/或融合在一起），从而使多孔垫在暴露于近红外激光时转变为固体膜。虽然在交叉点处进行焊接可以大大提高纳米纤维无纺垫的机械强度，但纳米纤维的熔融和融合可用于制造一类新型的光热纸，用于激光书写或打印，而无需使用化学物质或色粉颗粒。通过使用光掩模，我们可以将光热焊接与气体发泡技术集成，然后将无纺垫图案化并扩展成具有明确定义结构的 3D 支架。如果它们可以在合适的溶剂中共溶解以进行静电纺丝，则可以将该方法应用于不同的聚合物和染料组合。
