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Electrospinning short polymer micro-fibres with average aspect ratios in the range of 10–200

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Abstract

Ultra fine short fibres have a variety of applications. Short aligned fibres or a mixture of short and long fibres can reinforce brittle materials, alter the appearance, texture and durability of synthetic fibres, and adjust the strength, toughness and stiffness of a composite material. Among electrospun products, short fibres are usually produced by secondary processing of continuous as-spun fibres. However, this is not entirely straightforward or cost-effective due to the efficiency of the secondary process and the relatively low tensile strength of the electrospun ultrafine fibres. Besides, sub-micrometre size fibres with an average aspect ratio (AR) <200 have not been directly produced without further processing by changing collector geometry in electrospinning. Using a model polymer, polymethylsilsesquioxane (PMSQ), short micro-fibres with 10 < AR < 200 were electrospun directly in this work, i.e. without the need for a secondary process. The AR and particularly fibre length were shown to be strongly influenced by the solvent system used for electrospinning and the molecular weight (\( \overline {{M_w}} \)) of the polymer. When using PMSQ1 (\( \overline {{M_w}} \)=7500) in methanol instead of acetone, short fibres with AR <200 were produced instead of continuous fibres. Moreover, when \( \overline {{M_w}} \) of the polymer was decreased from 7500 (PMSQ1) to 4300 (PMSQ2), with all other conditions kept constant, significant reduction in the AR of the as-spun fibres was observed. Short fibres with average AR of 15 were produced from PMSQ2 solution in 3:2 v/v dimethylsulphoxide:2-nitropropane. The average AR of short fibres spun from PMSQ2 solution in 2:3 v/v methanol:propanol was 31. Also PMSQ1 in both of the above-mentioned binary solvent systems produced long continuous fibres with AR >3000 under the same spinning conditions.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Unilever for supporting partially the doctoral studies of C.J. Luo.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University College London, Torrington Place, London, WC1E 7JE, UK

    C. J. Luo, E. Stride & M. Edirisinghe

  2. Unilever Research, Olivier van Noortlaan 120, 3130 AC, Vlaardingen, The Netherlands

    S. Stoyanov & E. Pelan

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  1. C. J. Luo
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  2. E. Stride
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  3. S. Stoyanov
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  4. E. Pelan
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  5. M. Edirisinghe
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Correspondence to M. Edirisinghe.

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Luo, C.J., Stride, E., Stoyanov, S. et al. Electrospinning short polymer micro-fibres with average aspect ratios in the range of 10–200. J Polym Res 18, 2515–2522 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10965-011-9667-6

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