Magnetic Nanofibers: Unique Properties, Fabrication Techniques, and Emerging Applications

Abstract

Magnetic nanofibers (MNFs) are integrated with a variety of properties, such as large surface area, high porosity, small size effect and apparent magnetism. This enables MNFs to possess excellent properties of both nanofibers (NFs) and magnetic materials, which greatly widens the application of the original magnetic materials. A brief review of the properties of MNFs, fabrication techniques, and their emerging applications which include biomedical application, sensing and electronic devices, wastewater treatment and microwave absorption is presented. Finally, the development trend and prospect of MNFs in future are summarized and discussed.

Atomic layer deposition of Pd nanoparticles on self-supported carbon-Ni/NiO-Pd nanofiber electrodes for electrochemical hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions

“…The interpenetrating network formed by CNFs provides numerous active sites, high electrical conductivity, mechanical stability, and allows the electrolyte high diffusion [29]. All these unique properties make of CNFs an ideal electrode material for hydrogen fuel production [26][27][28], water treatment [17,30], biosensing [31,32], batteries [33], and fuel cells [33]. CNFs can be prepared with various methods, such as chemical vapor deposition, template synthesis, arc discharge, laser vaporization, electrospinning, and centrifugal spinning [33,34].…”

“…polyacrylonitrile (PAN), polyvinylpyrrolidone, or poly(vinyl alcohol)) followed by terminal carbonization under inert atmosphere (e.g. N 2 , Ar) provides a simple and versatile method to produce CNFs and their composites [35,30,36].…”

Elastomagnetic nanofiber wires by magnetic field assisted electrospinning

“…The possibility of producing different types of nanofiber wires, able of a magnetically induced giant relative deformation, is very promising in view of their functionalization in those conditions where the filiform structure can lead to advantages. In fact, on the basis of recent bibliography, MENWs development seems to open renewals and finalizations for biomedical applications [43][44][45][46], sensing devices [47][48][49][50], electromagnetic components [51,52], absorbers [53,54], tissue engineering [7,55,56] and, in particular, to biocompatible components sensitive to external stimuli in order to regenerate or to activate the contraction and dilatation of tendons and muscles that have lost their functionality [57][58][59][60][61].…”

Nanofibers for Biomedical and Healthcare Applications

“…Nanofibers are one of the interesting groups of nanomaterials with two similar external dimensions in the nanoscale (≤100 nm) and the third dimension significantly larger . Nanofibers exhibit a lot of wonderful features such as large surface area, possibility to surface functionalization, tunable porosity, a wide range of material selection, and superior mechanical performance .…”