Encapsulation of silver particles using co-axial jetting

摘要

An electrically charged jet of polymer solution is used to encapsulate silver particles contained in a suspension using co-axial dual needle jetting. The polymer solution flowing through the outer needle undergoes elec-trospinning while the silver suspension is simultaneously subjected to electrohydrodynamic atomization in the inner needle. The pattern and uniformity of encapsulation in the core is mainly determined by the speed of jetting in the inner needle. We demonstrate that this process could be utilized as a commercial freeform fabrication method of encapsulating metal particles within a polymeric sheath and this development could have numerous advanced technological applications.