Effects of material and process parameters on the diameter of electrospun polyacrylonitrile fibers were experimentally investigated. Response surface methodology (RSM) was utilized to design the experiments at the settings of solution concentration, voltage and the collector distance. It also imparted the evaluation of the significance of each parameter on the resultant fiber diameter. The investigations were carried out in the two-variable process domains of several collector distances as applied voltage and the solution concentration were varied at a fixed polymer molecular weight. The mean diameter and coefficient of variation were modeled by polynomial response surfaces as functions of solution concentration and voltage at each collector distance. Effect of applied voltage in micron-scale fiber diameter was observed to be almost negligible when solution concentration and collector distance were high. However, all three factors were found statistically significant in the production of nano-scale fibers. The response surface predictions revealed the parameter interactions for the resultant fiber diameter, and showed that there is a negative correlation between the mean diameter and coefficient of variation for the fiber diameter. A sub-domain of the parameter space consisting of the solution concentration, applied voltage and collector distance, was suggested for the potential nano-scale fiber production.
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