An origami-based technique for simple, effective and inexpensive fabrication of highly aligned far-field electrospun fibers

Abstract

Fabrication of highly aligned fibers by far-field electrospinning is a challenging task to accomplish. Multiple studies present advances in the alignment of electrospun fibers which involve modification of the conventional electrospinning setup with complex additions, multi-phased fabrication, and expensive components. This study presents a new collector design with an origami structure to produce highly-aligned far-field electrospun fibers. The origami collector mounts on the rotating drum and can be easily attached and removed for each round of fiber fabrication. This simple, effective, and inexpensive technique yields high-quality ultra-aligned fibers while the setup remains intact for other fabrication types. The electrospun poly(ɛ-caprolactone) (PCL) fibers were assessed by scanning electron microscope (SEM), fiber diameter distribution, water contact angle (WCA), Fast Fourier Transform analysis (FFT), surface plot profile, and pixel intensity plots. We thoroughly explored the impact of influential parameters, including polymer concentration, injection rate, collector rotation speed, distance from the collector to the tip, and needle gauge number on fibers’ quality and alignment. Moreover, we employed machine learning algorithms to predict the outcomes and classify the high-quality fibers instead of low-quality productions.