Arced Multi-Nozzle Electrospinning Spinneret for High-Throughput Production of Nanofibers

Abstract

The stable and continuous ejection of multiple jets with high densities is the key to the application of electrospinning technology. An arced multi-nozzle spinneret was designed to increase the production efficiency of electrospinning. The distribution of the electrical field was simulated to optimize the nozzles’ distribution of the spinneret. When the nozzles were arranged in an arc array, a relatively uniform electrical field could be obtained, which was beneficial for the weakening of electrical interference among the nozzles. Under the optimized electrical field, multiple jets from each nozzle could be ejected in a stable and continuous way. With the increase of the applied voltage, the electrical stretching force became larger, and there were fewer bonding structures. The average diameter of the electrospun nanofibers decreased with the increase of the applied voltage. When the distance between the inner nozzle and the collector increased, the charged jets suffered a larger stretching effect, resulting in the decrease of the average diameter of the electrospun nanofibers. The electrospinning current increased with the applied voltage and decreased with the distance between the inner nozzle and the collector, which is an important aspect for the monitoring of electrospinning jets. This work provides an effective way to promote the production efficiency of electrospun nanofibrous membranes.

Electrospinning as a route to advanced carbon fibre materials for selected low-temperature electrochemical devices: A review

“…Attaching a metal needle to the end of the syringe, and charging (or grounding) the needle fulfils the basic feed requirements for electrospinning and is often as far as researchers need to go for proof-of-concept studies [18][19][20][21][22][23], or basic morphology work [24][25][26][27][28]. An extension of this method is to utilize multiple needles on the same syringe pump to increase the material throughput and the electrospinning footprint on the collector [29][30][31].…”

Scale-up of Electrospinning: Market Overview of Products and Devices for Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Purposes

“…Therefore, different arrangements may be applied to the needles such as one-dimensional linear configuration or two-dimensional configurations such as elliptical, circular, triangular, square and hexagonal [ 65 , 74 ]. An arced multi-nozzle spinneret was designed to increase the production efficiency of electrospinning, resulting in relatively uniform electrical fields which in turn decreases the electrical interference of the needles and subsequently improves nanofiber quality [ 75 ]. The following are some examples for applying this technology for drug delivery and the pharmaceutical industry: an electro-spun formulation containing galactosidase as a model biopharmaceutical drug has been successfully developed through using scaled-up electrospinning experiments of a lab-scale, high-speed electrostatic spinning (HSES) setup consisting of a circular-shaped, stainless steel spinneret, equipped with eight orifices, and connected to a high-speed motor.…”

Three-dimensional composite electrospun nanofibrous membrane by multi-jet electrospinning with sheath gas for high-efficiency antibiosis air filtration

“…The electrospun nanofibrous membrane was fabricated by the previous reported method of multi-jet electrospinning with sheath gas [49][50][51][52], as shown in figure 1. The sheath gas in the laminar flow is helpful to overcome the electrical interferences among nozzles and to promote the stability of multijet electrospinning process.…”