Evaluation of electrospun nanofiber pore structure parameters

Abstract

Nanofibers produced by electrospinning method are widely used for drug delivery, as tissue scaffolding materials and filtration purposes where specific pore characteristics are required. For continued growth in these areas, it is critical that the nanofibers be properly designed for these applications to prevent failure. Most of the current methods only provide an indirect way of determining pore structure parameters and contain inherent disadvantages. In this study, we developed a novel image analysis method for measuring pore characteristics of electrospun nanofiber webs. Five electrospun webs with different pore characteristics were analyzed by this method. The method is direct, very fast, and presents valuable and comprehensive information regarding pore structure parameters of the webs. Two sets of simulated images were generated to study the effects of web density, fiber diameter and its variations on pore characteristics. The results indicated that web density and fiber diameter significantly influence the pore characteristics, whereas the effect of fiber diameter variations was insignificant.

Exploration of nanofibrous coated webs for chemical and biological protection

“…Figure 4 clearly demonstrated that sulphur mutated simulant chemical molecules is adhered onto surface of the web and therefore, web is acting as a barrier layer for CWA sulphur mustard gas. On the other hand, air permeability, water vapour, and bacteria and chemical filtration results of functional integrated layer showed agreement and correlation with those obtained by pore size and morphological measurements [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. Nanoweb morphology act as a barrier layer is in close agreement with previously reported work for various other applications [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39].…”

Optimization of electrospinning parameters for polyacrylonitrile-MgO nanofibers applied in air filtration

“…Kwon et al (2005) found that the percent porosity measured by mercury intrusion porosimeter increases with the increase in average diameter of electrospun PLCL (poly-lactide-co-ε-caprolactone) fibers (Keun Kwon et al, 2005). Ziabari et al (2008) studied the parameters affecting pore structure of electrospun PVA (polyvinyl alcohol) nanofiber and found that the increase of applied voltage and spinning distance when solution concentration was fixed at given value resulted in Table 2. Correlation coefficients between electrospinning parameters and response variables.…”

Nano Fiber Images Thresholding based on Imperial Competitive Algorithm

“…In another investigation [24] to measure the diameter, threshold value was selected for Nano fiber images on the base of trial and error method. Pore size is another important property of Nano fiber web which has been used by [25][26][27], to measure pores with image processing.…”