High performance electrospinning system for fabricating highly uniform polymer nanofibers

A high performance electrospinning system has been successfully developed for production of highly uniform polymer nanofibers. The electrospinning system employed a proportional-integral-derivative control action to maintain a constant current during the production of polyvinyl acetate (PVAc) nanofibers from a precursor solution prepared by dissolution of the PVAc powder in dimethyl formamide so that high uniformity of the nanofibers was achieved. It was found that the cone jet length observed at the end of the needle during the injection of the precursor solution and the average diameter of the nanofibers decreased with decreasing Q/I, where Q is the flow rate of the precursor solution of the nanofibers and I is the current flowing through the electrospinning system. A power law obtained from the relation between the average diameter and Q/I is in accordance with the theoretical model.