Electrospinning system with tunable collector for fabricating three-dimensional nanofibrous structures

Abstract

Electrospinning is a simple and efficient method for creating continuous nanofibres that present unique physical, chemical, electrical, magnetic and optical properties. However, its wide applications in various fields are restricted by the limitation that conventional electrospinning typically produces two-dimensional (2D) nanofibrous membranes with limited thickness. To address this issue, an electrospinning system is developed to construct 3D nanofibrous structures by using a tunable collector on which a diameter-adjustable cage rotor was mounted. The thickness of the nanofibrous structures is greatly increased by reducing the cage rotor diameter in certain time intervals during electrospinning. For comparison, different poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) nanofibrous structures were manufactured by using the conventional and the proposed methods, respectively. The results indicated that the improved system is able to construct 3D nanofibrous structures with high porosity, stable geometrical morphology and good mechanical property. The work is expected to be useful for fabricating functional nanofibrous materials for a variety of applications. © The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2014.