Surface hydro-properties of electrospun fiber mats

Abstract

Hydrophobic and hydrophilic properties (hydro-properties) on material surfaces have been an active research area due to their numerous practical applications. Various fiber mats were prepared to investigate the effect of fiber morphology on the surface properties. Four polymers with intrinsically different hydro-properties are used to fabricate the electrospun fibers with diameter ranging from 0.1 µm to 10 µm by both methods of melt and solution. The pore size, pore size distribution, porosity, and the surface roughness of electrospun fiber mats are evaluated by a Porometry and an image processing technique. The contact angles are measured to characterize the surface properties of fiber mats using the mixture solutions of water and ethanol. As a result, the pore size and surface roughness are closely related to the contact angles. The contact angle is highly increased with the large deviation of fiber diameter and the high surface roughness of fiber mats. It is noted that the designed surface property is achieved by modifying fiber morphology without any complex treatment of material surface.

Defect minimization and feature control in electrospinning through design of experiments

“…Responses y 2 and y 3 turned out to be very correlated, as shown in the scatter plots of Figure . This is also in agreement with the literature . Hence, a common model for them was adopted by selecting only the terms that are present in both models when fitted to y 2 and y 3 separately, according to the AIC.…”

“…This is also in agreement with the literature. 28,29 Hence, a common model for them was adopted by selecting only the terms that are present in both models when fitted to y 2 and y 3 separately, according to the AIC. The coefficients b ðiÞ were independently estimated (by least All computations were performed in R, 30 using the package MASS.…”

Novel electrospun polyvinylidene fluoride-graphene oxide-silver nanocomposite membranes with protein and bacterial antifouling characteristics

“…The increase of contact angle in electrospun polymer membrane is related to the complication of interacting factors on the mat surface such as fiber diameter, porosity and surface roughness [72]. Metal nanoparticles have been added generally to polymers for enhancing their hydrophilicity.…”

Electrospun Ceramic Nanofiber Mats Today: Synthesis, Properties, and Applications

“…It is worth knowing that the surface tension of the mixture solution decreases with adding the ethanol to water. The height ( y ) and the half width ( x ) of the formed droplet on the target surface are measured to calculate the contact angle ( θ ) using the following equation [129]:$\cos \theta =\frac{x^2-y^2}{x^2+y^2}$…”

“…Pore size and surface roughness also depend on fiber diameter. Cho et al [129] showed that the porosity sharply increases as the fiber diameter increases and reaches a plateau after a critical fiber diameter. The fiber mats with a large deviation of fiber diameter and high surface roughness show a large change of the contact angle.…”