Effect of the addition of a fugitive salt on electrospinnability of poly(ε-caprolactone)

Described in this paper is a novel study focused on producing bead-free ultrafine fibers, with narrow fiber diameter distribution, from Poly(E-caprolactone) (PCL) via electrospinning. High quality product is achieved with the use of a new solvent system that involves an acid-base reaction to produce weak salt complexes, which serve to increase the conductivity of the polymer solution. Additionally, the salt formed dissociates easily and evaporates along with the solvent during the spinning process because its respective acid-base components are volatile at room temperature. This results into the formation of pure PCL nanofibers of ultrafine dimensions. Glacial acetic acid was used as the solvent for the polymer and the organic base pyridine was used to initiate the formation of salt complexes in the solution. Pyridine was added at six different levels to vary the conductivity and examine the latter's effect on fiber morphology. Along with the pyridine content, the polymer concentration was also varied to determine how the two interacted in influencing the size of the fiber and the quality of the structure obtained. It was found that bead-free fibers of sizes lying well within the nano range (140-340 nm) could be produced using the conducting solvent system. Two interesting effects were noted. For a given polymer concentration, the mean fiber diameter increased with increase in pyridine amount. And, lower the polymer concentration, higher was the amount of pyridine required to produce bead-free nanofibers. The combination of these effects along with the fact that the reproducibility of the results was high provided a means of producing fibers with predictable sizes. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.