The outer liquid of a two-liquid coaxial electrified jet is gelled before the onset of natural instabilities to yield hollow nanofibers. By using sol-gel chemistry, innocuous solvents such as glycerol and olive oil, and electrohydrodynamics, it is possible to make such structures in a rather straightforward manner.

Electrically driven liquid jets are combined with sol-gel methods to design vesicles and fibers made from inorganic oxides and hybrid materials with diameters in the micrometer and submicrometer range. The proposed materials synthesis method benefits greatly from the maturity of sol-gel chemistry and the generalities of a structure-directing phenomenon that is physical in nature.

A novel method to control the stability of Taylor cones during electrospinning/electrospray of solutions with highly volatile solvents is presented. An additional advantage is that fiber‐to‐particle transitions are also controlled without changing the chemistry or the voltage/current characteristics. The Figure shows the transition from particles to fibers effected by simply changing the gas flow rate through an outer capillary.