Preparation of high positioning accuracy lattice patterns with polymeric microfibers derived from near‐field electrospinning

Abstract

Electrospinning is a straightforward and versatile technology that has been broadly applied to the preparation of microfibers. However, the fabrication of complicated patterns with high positioning accuracy is still a challenge. The enhancement of the positioning accuracy is restricted by the bending instability of the jet and the motion stage. Here, an effective method to improve the positioning accuracy of ordered fibers by optimizing printing parameter and printing order is proposed. Highly oriented and uniformly aligned microfiber arrays composed of polyethylene oxide (PEO) fibers with a diameter of 2.8 ± 0.13 μm are deposited by adjusting the process parameters. Moreover, the accumulative return error of the printed pattern was reduced by 30.54 μm in X‐axis and 55.59 μm in Y‐axis using an optimized printing order. The lattice patterns with a high positioning accuracy of 0.98 ± 0.06 μm were obtained, which is nearly two orders of magnitude higher than that of the structure with unoptimized printing order. Results indicate that the method can significantly improve the positioning accuracy of the lattice patterns of polymeric microfibers, which has a promising prospect in the field of high‐precision micro manufacturing.