Volume no :2, Issue no: 1, July (2010)

MORPHOLOGY CONTROLLED ELECTROSPUN POLY(VINYL PYRROLIDONE) FIBERS: EFFECTS OF ORGANIC SOLVENT AND RELATIVE HUMIDITY

Author's: Nakagawa Yuya, Wei Kai, Byoung-Suhk Kim and Ick-Soo Kim
Pages: [97] - [112]
Received Date: July 31, 2010
Submitted by:

Abstract

We report the effects of various solvents and relative humidity on the morphologies of the resultant electrospun poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP) fibers during electrospinning process. The PVP solution dissolved in ethanol (EtOH) exhibited the best electrospun PVP fibers, whereas water and DMF produced the film-like morphologies under the identical conditions, indicating the failure of fiber formation, mostly due to slower evaporation of the solvents, and thereby immediately re-dissolution by the water and N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) remained. In addition, the smooth PVP nanofibers were successfully observed at the relative humidity of with the fiber diameters ranging from 960nm to 1000nm. However, at higher relative humidity the beaded fibers were formed. As the relative humidity further increased to the resulting PVP fibers were fused and resulted in film-like morphologies. This was ascribed to re-dissolution and destruction of the fiber structures formed on the collector due to higher humidity environment.

Keywords

nanofibers, electrospinning, poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) fibers, morphologies.