Scalable production of polymer nanofiber-based ropes, cables, and coatings

摘要

This article presents a single, scalable manufacturing process for the continuous production of nanofiber-based ropes, cables, microscale wire coatings, and multimaterial mats. The ropes, cables, and wire coatings were manufactured with a cascading electrospinning setup that was used in conjunction with a rotating ring collector and a take-up reel. The fibrous mats were realized by replacing the ring collector with a directed nozzle. Both configurations allowed for nanofiber architectures with multiple layers and material combinations. The tensile failure patterns of the cables revealed distinct effects of the multimaterial sheaths. The adhesion strength and load-displacement profiles for the nanofiber coating interfaces were observed to be polymer-specific. For multimaterial mats, the cospinning of the polymers resulted in a blended mechanical behavior for the composite mats, in contrast to the sequential ply failure observed in laminated mats. (C) 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.