Modelling of electrospinning process at various electric fields

Abstract

In electrospinning process nanostructured solid fibres are produced from charged polymer jet oriented at external electrostatic field. Materials such as polymer, composites and tissue scaffold fibres have been fabricated with electrospinning techniques. The typical obstacle of electrospun fibre production is the whipping instability, resulting from the chaotic oscillation of polymer jet. In this Letter, feasibility of suppressing the whipping instability is analysed and explained using a mathematical model based on the usage of secondary electrostatic field created by finite length hollow cylinder. It is shown that the three-dimensional path of polymer jet calculated by computer simulations focus the characteristic spot size of the deposited electrospun fibre to a smaller diameter, which is coherent to the experimental observations.