Electrospinning of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) nanofibers: Optimization study using taguchi design of experiment

Abstract

Electrospinning polymer has been acknowledged as an effective technique for the fabrication of polymer nanofiber. In recent years many polymers have been successfully electrospun into thin smooth uniform fibers. In this study, the effect of various process parameters on the morphology and diameter of fibers obtained from a solution of PET in Trifluoracetic acid and Dichloromethane in (1:3) ratio were illustrated. The selected factors that were to be controlled for this experiment are the concentration of PET in the solution, flow rate, applied voltage, and needle-tip to the collector distance. L9Orthogonal arrays of Taguchi design, S/N ratio and analyses of variance ANOVA are used to arrange the number of trials, analyses and observe the optimum conditions for the fabrication of PET. For this, the best level of the factors was determined as PET concentration (5%), flow rate (1ml/h), voltage (15 Kv) and distance (15 cm) in order to obtain small fiber in diameter.