Vortex airflow-assisted melt differential electrospinning for preparing superfine fiber yarns was proposed. This method with solvent-free exhibits a higher yield of 20 ± 5.17 m/min compared to the range of 0–5 m/min achieved by solution electrospinning with organic solvents. Simulation and high-speed photography show that the fibers are aggregated by suction airflow and twisted into yarns by vortex airflow. Polylactic acid (PLA) superfine fiber yarns exhibit fine fiber diameters ranging from 0.96 to 5.57 μm, a yarn diameter of 211.7 ± 40.8 μm, and a high tensile strength of 39.4 ± 3.12 MPa. Furthermore, these PLA melt electrospun yarns can be woven into fabric with a water contact angle of 120.1° and triboelectric voltage of 7.41 V, demonstrating their potential in self-cleaning textiles and flexible smart textiles. Moreover, this method is generally applicable to thermoplastic polymers including polyethylene …

Electrospun fibers membrane is considered an efficient drug carrier for transdermal drug delivery due to its breathability and high drug loading percentage, compared with coating film. However, pollution and safety risk caused by the use of organic solvents during the solution electrospinning process limit its industrialization and direct application in the biomedical field. Herein, a fiber membrane containing tandospirone was prepared using the melt electrospinning process and to be used for sustained drug release. The process of fiber preparation is an eco‐friendly and safe process due to the characteristics of solvent‐free. The in vitro drug release results showed that the fiber membranes containing tandospirone had slower initial drug release and higher end drug release compared with coating film containing tandospirone. The sustained‐release property can be attributed to the crystalline structure of fibers and …

The electrospun yarn for sutures has gained worldwide attention due to its fine fibers that resemble the extracellular matrix and its abundant functional sites. However, the use of a large number of toxic solvents poses safety risks and environmental pollution during production, making it challenging to directly apply electrospun yarn in the biomedical field. In this study, an environmentally friendly and safe method without toxic solvents was proposed for preparing antibacterial PLA ultrafine fiber sutures. This method involves melt electrospinning, hot‐stretching, low‐temperature plasma treatment, and chitosan grafting. The PLA ultrafine fiber sutures exhibit a high tensile strength which is 2.04 N before knotting and 1.57 N after knotting. The suture diameter is 118.7 μm and average fiber diameter is 1.72 μm. Chitosan grafted on the fiber surface provides excellent antibacterial properties for the sutures, with …

Oil spills are an unavoidable risk during exploration, production, and transportation. In the event of an accident, the environmental impact is often severe and may even harm the local environment for decades. Therefore, there is a need to find a method and device that minimizes damage to the environment. Oil spill cleanup and remedy are still a challenge and raise global concern because of the many environmental complications associated with it. This chapter reviews existing methods and devices for oil spill cleanup, particularly the wetting phenomenon for oil absorption and membrane filtration methods for oil spill cleanup, and focuses on the properties of nanofiber materials and their use for manufacturing oil absorbents and cross-flow filtration membranes. In particular, this chapter discusses the performance, effectiveness, and applications of nanofibrous materials fabricated by the solution and hot melt …

In recent years, researchers are paying more attention to high efficiency, high process stability and eco-friendly nanofiber fabrication techniques. Among all of the nanofiber fabrication methods, electrospinning including solution electrospinning and melt electrospinning is the most promising method for nanofiber mass production. Compared to solution electrospinning, melt electrospinning could be applied in many areas such as tissue engineering and wound dressings due to the absence of any toxic solvent involvement. Capillary melt electrospinning generates only one jet with low efficiency. Hence, we have proposed polymer melt differential electrospinning (PMDES) method, which could produce multiple jets with smallest interjet distance of 1.1 mm from an umbrella shape spinneret, thus improving the production efficiency significantly. Many techniques such as material modification, suction wind, and …

Energy and environment are two major problems facing mankind today. Developing environment-friendly and energy-saving technology has always been the focuses of researchers all over the world. Batteries, supercapacitors, and fuel cells are three widely used or promising devices that can ease the energy and environmental pressures. However, there are still many problems and deficiencies that need to be solved or improved, such as low capacity, low-power density, and poor durability. In order to address these drawbacks, nanofibers are introduced into the application of electrode and electrolyte fabrication because of the high specific surface area, interpenetrating network, and strength. This section will introduce the applications of nanofibers in batteries, supercapacitors, and fuel cells in detail.

Magnetic nanofibers (MNFs) are integrated with a variety of properties, such as large surface area, high porosity, small size effect and apparent magnetism. This enables MNFs to possess excellent properties of both nanofibers (NFs) and magnetic materials, which greatly widens the application of the original magnetic materials. A brief review of the properties of MNFs, fabrication techniques, and their emerging applications which include biomedical application, sensing and electronic devices, wastewater treatment and microwave absorption is presented. Finally, the development trend and prospect of MNFs in future are summarized and discussed.

Melt electrospinning is a technique capable of producing micro-and nanofibers with the advantages of being eco-friendly, cost-effective, and applied in many areas such as nonwovens with high performance, biomedicine, high-efficiency filtration, oil sorption, and many others. This chapter describes the current trends on melt electrospinning including advancements in the technique, processing parameters, materials, apparatus, and areas of applications. Melt differential electrospinning which is a new technique for nanofiber production invented by our innovation team of advanced polymer processing has been introduced. Future perspectives on melt electrospinning are also proposed.

Polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) superfine fiber is a promising high efficient material for high temperature dedusting. In this paper, the PPS superfine fiber was prepared by melt-electrospinning for the first time. In order to produce the finer fibers, the polypropylene (PP) was added to PPS and the effects of blending ratio, spinning voltage, spinning temperature, and spinning distance on resultant fibers were investigated systematically. The superfine fibers of PPS with an average diameter of 4.12 μm were successfully prepared at the optimized condition, which was one third of that by melt-spinning method. With the decrease of 76.21 % fibers diameter, the filter efficiency increased from 87.03 % to 98.05 %. The presented method provides a new way for the scalable and green fabrication of PPS superfine fibers.

Marine Oil spills have become a serious environmental problem, and contribute to severe impacts and economic losses. Fast and efficient cleanup of oil from marine environment is vital. The use of sorbents is one of the most efficient techniques in removing oil from water. In this work, pure polypropylene (PP) ultrafine fibers with 2 μm diameter were prepared by air assisted melt electrospinning device to be used as oil sorbent. Two fiber samples were used in this study, fluffy, cotton like appearance and oriented, cloth like appearance with different porosities. The influence of temperature change on oil/water mixture was studied. Fluffy fibers showed a better performance in sorption capacity. Results indicated that change in temperature was an important factor in determining the sorption capacity of the fibers. Additionally, in contrast to solution electrospinning, melt electrospinning is safer, cost effective and …

New composite polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)/polypropylene (PP) membranes were prepared by combining both solution electrospinning and melt electrospinning methods. Self‐designed and made needleless melt electrospinning device was used to fabricate PP membranes which acted as the support layer. PVA membrane on the surface was fabricated via solution electrospinning. The electrospun PVA/PP composite membranes were characterized by the pore size distribution, pure water flux, and rejection ratio, then compared with general composite membranes. Characterizations revealed that the fiber diameter of solution electrospun PVA membrane and melt electrospun PP membrane were 0.171 ± 0.027 and 2.24 ± 0.33 μm, respectively, and the average pore size was 0.832 μm and 27.29 μm, which was much smaller than the nonwoven membrane. The rejection ratio to the 500 nm particles of the PVA/PP …

Melt electrospinning, a technique that has gained increasing attention since it easily can generate continuous ultrafine fibers directly from polymer melts without the use of any solvent. Therefore, it is considered as a safe, cost effective, and environmental friendly technique. However, with all those great advantages, the technique still suffers some drawbacks such as: large fiber diameter and low throughput. The hot air assisted melt differential electrospinning (MDES) is a new technique invented by our research team that can solve or eliminate those drawbacks. The most important features of our used apparatus are: Needleless nozzle that could generate multiple Taylor cones around the bottom edge of the nozzle, which can result in a high throughput. The stretching force acting on the jets can be further strengthened by an air current provided by an air pressure gun. Interference between the high voltage supply …

Solventless melt electrospinning which allows mass production is substantially safe. It can produce fibres of hundreds of nanometres, one order of magnitude lower than that of conventional melt-blown spinning. In this paper, a comparison between different technologies producing ultra-fine fibre reveals the advancement of melt electrospinning method using umbellate spinneret for ultra-fine fibre mass production. Some typical industrial polymer materials was also spun using melt electrospinng method, including biodegradable materials like polylactic acid and polycaprolactone (PCL), which may contribute to some interesting applications. In addition, a machine for mass production is also proposed. Finally, proposition of the industrialisation of ultra-fine fibre by melt electrospinning is discussed.

Ultrafine polypropylene (PP) fibers as oil sorbents were fabricated via a needleless melt‐electrospinning device and were characterized by scanning electron microscopy and contact‐angle analysis. PP fibers of various diameters and porosities were obtained by the manipulation of the applied electrical field. The effects of the fiber diameter and porosity on the oil‐sorption capacity and oil‐retention behavior were investigated. The experimental results demonstrate that for fiber diameter on the microscale, the porosity played a paramount role in determining the oil‐sorption capacities. The maximum oil‐sorption capacity of the resulting PP fibers with regard to motor oil and peanut oil were 129 and 80 g/g, respectively; these values were approximately six to seven times that of commercial PP nonwoven fabricated through the melt‐blown method. In addition, even after seven sorption/desorption cycles, the oil‐sorption …