Beaudoin, É.J.; Kubaski, M.M.; Samara, M.; Zednik, R.J.; Demarquette, N.R. Scaled-Up Multi-Needle Electrospinning Process Using Parallel Plate Auxiliary Electrodes. Nanomaterials2022, 12, 1356.
Beaudoin, É.J.; Kubaski, M.M.; Samara, M.; Zednik, R.J.; Demarquette, N.R. Scaled-Up Multi-Needle Electrospinning Process Using Parallel Plate Auxiliary Electrodes. Nanomaterials 2022, 12, 1356.
Beaudoin, É.J.; Kubaski, M.M.; Samara, M.; Zednik, R.J.; Demarquette, N.R. Scaled-Up Multi-Needle Electrospinning Process Using Parallel Plate Auxiliary Electrodes. Nanomaterials2022, 12, 1356.
Beaudoin, É.J.; Kubaski, M.M.; Samara, M.; Zednik, R.J.; Demarquette, N.R. Scaled-Up Multi-Needle Electrospinning Process Using Parallel Plate Auxiliary Electrodes. Nanomaterials 2022, 12, 1356.
Abstract
Electrospinning has gained a lot of attention in recent years due to its ability to easily produce high-quality polymeric nanofibers. However, electrospinning suffers from limited production capacity and a method to readily scale up this process is needed. One obvious approach includes the use of multiple electrospinning needles operating in parallel. Nonetheless, such an implementation has remained elusive, partly due to the uneven electric field distribution resulting from the Coulombic repulsion between the charged jets and needles. In this work, the uniformization of the electric field was performed for a linear array of twenty electrospinning needles using lateral charged plates as auxiliary electrodes. The effect of the auxiliary electrodes was characterized by investigating the semi-vertical angle of the spun jets, as well as the deposition area and diameter of the fibers. Finite element simulation was also used to analyze the impact of the auxiliary electrodes on the electric field intensity below each needle. Implementing parallel lateral plates as auxiliary electrodes was shown to help achieve uniformization of the electric field, the semi-vertical angle of the spun jet, and the deposition area of the fibers for the multi-needle electrospinning process. The high-quality morphology of the polymer nanofibers obtained by this improved process was confirmed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). These findings help resolve one of the primary challenges that have plagued the large-scale industrial adoption of this exciting polymer processing technique.
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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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