Protuberant Morphology of Electrospun Polystyrene Fibers

초록

Even though in the past few years there has been much progress in the area of electrospinning owing to the efforts of many research groups, electrospinning is still one of the most powerful tools for fabricating nano- to micron-size structures and materials with a broad range of functionalities.1,2 They can be used for a variety of applications including photonics, sensors, catalysis, membranes, filters and biomedical and pharmaceutical products.1,2 However, many technical issues still need to be resolved before the full potential of electrospinning will be realized. First of all, it is necessary to systematically investigate the correlation between the secondary structure of electrospun nanofibers and the processing parameters, e.g., solvents contained in the polymer solution. It is also important to organize nanofibers of various types (e.g. porous, hollow, and core/shell) into well-defined hierarchical structures in order to fully exploit their potential in device fabrication and material development.1-10