Role of Elasticity in Control of Diameter of Electrospun PAN Nanofibers

A series of poly(acrylonitrile-co-methylacrylate) copolymers (PAN) with varying molecular weight were synthesized by radical copolymerization using alpha-alpha'-azobisisobutyronitrile (AIBN) as initiator. These copolymers were dissolved at different concentrations in DMF and electrospun at Minimum electrospinning voltage (MEV) to correlate electrical energy required to perform the mechanical work during the spinning of the fibers. The diameters of the resultant fibers were correlated with the Berry number and average number of entanglements per chain of the spinning solution. It was observed that number of entanglements per chain, which represents the capacity of the polymer system to store elastic energy, could correlate well with the ultimate diameter of the fiber. Interestingly, the diameters of the nanofibers were found to increase linearly with increase in number of entanglements per chain with two distinct regions having transition of the slope at number of entanglement value of 3.5.