A dynamic liquid support system for continuous electrospun yarn fabrication

Electrospinning is known to be a highly versatile process which is able to produce fibers made out of different compositions with diameter of a few microns down to several nanometers. Current electrospinning technology generally involves the deposition of fibers onto a solid substrate although in some cases, a liquid coagulation bath is used to collect the fibers. However, a liquid collector may offer several advantages over a solid substrate. A novel electrospun fiber manipulation process through the use of a water vortex is described in this communication where continuous yarn was made from electrospun fibers. Preliminary studies on some parameters such as solution feed rate and solution concentration and their impact on fabrication of the yarn and the fiber morphology were carried out. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.