Drawing suspended polymer micro-/nanofibers using glass micropipettes

This letter proposes a method for fabricating suspended micro-/nanoscale polymer fibers continuously, in which polymeric micro-/nanofibers are formed by drawing and solidification of a viscous liquid polymer solution which is pumped through a glass micropipette. By controlling the drawing parameters, this method is demonstrated to form networks of suspended fibers having amorphous internal structure and uniform diameters from micrometers down to sub-50-nm for different molecular weights of polystyrene dissolved in xylene. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.