Wang Wei-Chih, Cheng Yen-Tse, Estroff Benjamin
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
Polymers (Basel). 2020 Dec 22;13(1):12. doi: 10.3390/polym13010012.
Electrospinning polymer fibers is a well-understood process primarily resulting in random mats or single strands. More recent systems and methods have produced nanofiber yarns (NFY) for ease of use in textiles. This paper presents a method of NFY manufacture using a simplified dry electrospinning system to produce self-assembling functional NFY capable of conducting electrical charge. The polymer is a mixture of cellulose nanocrystals (CNC), polyvinyl acrylate (PVA) and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS). When treated with ethylene glycol (EG) to enhance conductivity, fibers touching the collector plate align to the applied electrostatic field and grow by twisting additional nanofiber polymers injected by the jet into the NFY bundle. The longer the electrospinning continues, the longer and more uniformly twisted the NFY becomes. This process has the added benefit of reducing the electric field required for NFY production from >2.43 kV cm to 1.875 kV cm.
静电纺丝聚合物纤维是一个已被充分理解的过程，主要产生无规毡或单丝。最近的系统和方法已经生产出纳米纤维纱（NFY），以便于在纺织品中使用。本文介绍了一种使用简化的干法静电纺丝系统制造NFY的方法，以生产能够传导电荷的自组装功能性NFY。该聚合物是纤维素纳米晶体（CNC）、聚丙烯酸乙烯酯（PVA）和聚（3,4-乙撑二氧噻吩）聚苯乙烯磺酸盐（PEDOT:PSS）的混合物。当用乙二醇（EG）处理以提高导电性时，接触收集板的纤维会与施加的静电场对齐，并通过将射流注入NFY束中的额外纳米纤维聚合物捻合而生长。静电纺丝持续的时间越长，NFY就变得越长且捻合越均匀。这个过程还有一个额外的好处，即可以将生产NFY所需的电场从>2.43 kV/cm降低到1.875 kV/cm。
