Manufacturing of ZnO nanofibers using Electrospinning

Abstract

Nanostructured zinc oxide (ZnO) materials have been of interest for researchers because of their nontoxicity, and wide range of applications. Various methods have been used to fabricate nanofibers, but electrospinning only method which is the simplest cost effective with the highly versatile technique that has been extensively used for the fabrication continuous nanofibers. This is a versatile technique, which can be used to generate nanofibers from a rich variety of materials. The variation of a zinc oxide (ZnO)-polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) composite structure has been investigated in morphology by electrospinning from a series of mixture solutions of ZnO sol-gel and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP). The main advantage of nanotechnology is its surface area to volume ratio. Adding materials in form of the nanoparticle, fibers, tubes, flakes, etc. changes the material properties significantly. The solvent used for the electrospinning solutions was Dimethylformamide (DMF) under the electric field of 24kv with flow rate of 0.5ml/hr. distance between syringe and drum 24cm. By Electrospinning technique, we can achieve the desired diameter of nanofibers. The nanofibers were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM).