M A Costolo et al 2008 Nanotechnology 19 035707 doi:10.1088/0957-4484/19/03/035707
M A Costolo, J D Lennhoff, R Pawle, E A Rietman1 and A E Stevens
Show affiliationsSolutions of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) were electrospun using a range of process parameters, resulting in fibre diameters from 10 to 320 nm. A nonlinear neural network system model was used to analyse the dependence of the fibre diameter on the process parameters, and used to simulate conditions for electrospinning 40–60 nm diameter fibres. These results indicated that flow rate is most important for determining fibre diameter. It was not possible to find the appropriate conditions for electrospinning sub-25 nm fibres. Precise control of the ambient temperature and relative humidity will be critical to producing electrospun fibres that are sub-25 nm. Further, it is unlikely that sub-25 nm fibres will be produced without significant changes in the electrospinning apparatus, for example, by use of focusing and jet-steering fields, alternate carrier gases to modify the discharge characteristics, or patterned electrospinning.
81.16.-c Methods of nanofabrication and processing
81.07.-b Nanoscale materials and structures: fabrication and characterization
Issue 3 (23 January 2008)
Received 21 June 2007, in final form 15 November 2007
Published 13 December 2007
M A Costolo et al 2008 Nanotechnology 19 035707
Sajal Biring et al 2008 Nanotechnology 19 015304
Caylin Mendelowitz et al. 2004 ApJ 601 1120
W J Duncan et al 2010 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 22 052201
Kourosh Nozari and Behnaz Fazlpour JCAP11(2007)006
Geoffrey Compère et al JHEP12(2009)047
Muhittin Mungan and Tonguç Rador 2008 J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 41 055002
E Ben-Naim and P L Krapivsky J. Stat. Mech. (2005) L10002
F Buonocore et al 2008 Nanotechnology 19 025711
Zhi-Qiang Jiang and Wei-Xing Zhou 2008 New J. Phys. 10 043002