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    • Rights: University of Waikato. All rights reserved.
    Published 5 December 2013 Referencing Hub media
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    Simon Feasey and Iain Hosie, Revolution Fibres, explain the process of electrospinning nanofibres.

    Jargon alert

    • Taylor cone: the characteristic droplet shape formed by fluid on the tip of the needle when under the effect of an electric field1 as in the process of electrospinning.
    • Electrostatic field: when two objects in each other’s vicinity have different electrical charges2, an electrostatic3 field exists between them.
    • Collector/collector plate: the surface onto which the electrospun nanofibre is deposited. In this video clip, two collectors are illustrated. The first is a metal4 disc holding a filter. The disc spins around during the electrospinning process and the nanofibre is deposited over the surface of the filter. In the second example, nanofibres are deposited onto a removable sheet, a roll5 of material that runs through the Komodo.

    UPDATE: In May 2021, Revolution Fibres rebranded to NanoLayr.

    Transcript

    Simon Feasey

    What happens is you prepare a polymer6 in a solution use a solvent7 to break down a typical polymer like nylon or polyester into solution. You then charge that solution with a very, very high voltage8, anything up 50, 60 thousand volts. And you have a collector plate which is the opposite charge or neutral, so you actually create an electrostatic field.

    So within that electrostatic field, you’ve got a huge build-up of electrons trying to get to the other side, so the solution actually beads up into a droplet, it forms what’s called a Taylor cone. The Taylor cone is like the feeder, and the fibre spins in the electrostatic field, and as it spins, it speeds up and goes faster and faster and stretches. So the action of the stretching of the fibre is reducing the diameter continuously. So when you get all the parameters9 right, you can end up depositing a dry fibre of a nanoscale10 onto the surface of a collector plate.

    Iain Hosie

    Nanofibres form on a collector because they’re very, very difficult to handle. We need to collect them on some sort of fabric or removable sheet, depending on that end application, if we want to keep the fabric in place like in a filter or if we want to remove the collector later on. This is how we deal with it in composites, for example. So the fibres need to land onto something, and we have a roll of material which will enter the machine, we apply the nanofibre and then the roll is rewound at the other end.

    Acknowledgements
    Revolution Fibres:
    Simon Feasey, Iain Hosie
    Hansol Cha

    The Royal Society of New Zealand NZ, TVNZ 7 in partnership with the Ministry of Business, Innovation11 and, Business & Employment
    Sharayanan

    1. electric field: Any region where a charged object experiences an electric force.
    2. electric charge: An excess of electrons on an object gives it a negative charge whereas a deficiency of electrons gives it a positive charge. Protons carry a positive charge and electrons carry a negative charge. Ions carry a positive or negative charge.
    3. electrostatic: Electric charge that is stationary.
    4. metal: Any of a category of elements that usually have a shiny surface, are generally good conductors of heat and electricity and can be melted or fused, hammered into thin sheets or drawn into wires (for example, copper).
    5. roll: In flight, roll is the movement of the aircraft from side to side about a transverse axis. With an airplane, this means the wings dipping down on one side.
    6. polymer: The name given to a family of chemical compounds with a high molecular weight that have a long chain of smaller, identical linked molecules (called monomers). Cellulose is a naturally occurring polymer, although there are many manmade polymers such as nylon. Polymers are especially valued by many industries where they are the essential ingredient of plastics, concrete, glass and rubber. The process by which molecules are linked together to form polymers is called polymerisation.
    7. solvent: A liquid that dissolves another substance to form a solution. For example, water is a solvent for sugar – when sugar is dissolved in water, it becomes a sugar solution.
    8. voltage: The potential difference (PD) between two points in a circuit. It measures the potential of the electrons to flow between two points. The higher the PD, the greater the electron flow. PD is sometimes thought of as electrical pressure.
    9. parameters: Limits of measurement.
    10. nanoscale: Refers to dimensions below 100 nm. Also refers to the small size, often only a few nm, at which the properties of a substance are different to properties of bulk material.
    11. Innovation: The development of a new process or product that is then used by others.

    Appears in

    ARTICLE

    Electrospinning nanofibres

    Electrospinning is an extensively studied and widely applied method for nanofibre production. It produces long, continuous fibres with diameters ranging from a few nanometres up to several ...

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      electric field

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      2. Any region where a charged object experiences an electric force.

      metal

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      3. Any of a category of elements that usually have a shiny surface, are generally good conductors of heat and electricity and can be melted or fused, hammered into thin sheets or drawn into wires (for example, copper).

      solvent

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      4. A liquid that dissolves another substance to form a solution. For example, water is a solvent for sugar – when sugar is dissolved in water, it becomes a sugar solution.

      nanoscale

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      5. Refers to dimensions below 100 nm. Also refers to the small size, often only a few nm, at which the properties of a substance are different to properties of bulk material.

      electric charge

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      6. An excess of electrons on an object gives it a negative charge whereas a deficiency of electrons gives it a positive charge. Protons carry a positive charge and electrons carry a negative charge. Ions carry a positive or negative charge.

      roll

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      7. In flight, roll is the movement of the aircraft from side to side about a transverse axis. With an airplane, this means the wings dipping down on one side.

      voltage

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      8. The potential difference (PD) between two points in a circuit. It measures the potential of the electrons to flow between two points. The higher the PD, the greater the electron flow. PD is sometimes thought of as electrical pressure.

      Innovation

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      9. The development of a new process or product that is then used by others.

      electrostatic

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      10. Electric charge that is stationary.

      polymer

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      11. The name given to a family of chemical compounds with a high molecular weight that have a long chain of smaller, identical linked molecules (called monomers). Cellulose is a naturally occurring polymer, although there are many manmade polymers such as nylon. Polymers are especially valued by many industries where they are the essential ingredient of plastics, concrete, glass and rubber. The process by which molecules are linked together to form polymers is called polymerisation.

      parameters

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      12. Limits of measurement.

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