Enhanced mechanical performance of electrospun nanofibrous membrane by solvent effect

摘要

Electrospun nanofibrous membranes are attractive to plenty of fields such as gas/water treatment media, scaffolds for tissue engineering, sensors and protective fabrics et al. All of these applications are attributed to the unique properties of electrospun membranes. The mainly outstanding properties are high porosity, large specific surface areas, non-woven structure. The certain strength of electrospun membranes is required, especially used as filtration media, scaffolds and protective fabrics. In this study, a facile method was demonstrated to fabricate polyacrylonitrile (PAN) nanofibrous membranes with high strength. The method involved the use of mixed solvents to prepare the polymer solution for electrospinning. The solvents were the mixture of N, N-dimethylformamide (DMF) and Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), of which DMSO is a high vapor pressure component. With the increasing of DMSO in the solvent mixture, solvent-induced adhesion between fibers was obvious and the. The mechanical properties such as strength of the membranes are improved by solvent effect induced adhesion at two fiber contact points.