Electrostatic Self-Assembly of Composite Nanofiber Yarn

Wei-Chih Wang; Yen-Tse Cheng; Benjamin Estroff

doi:10.3390/polym13010012

Electrostatic Self-Assembly of Composite Nanofiber Yarn

Polymers (Basel). 2020 Dec 22;13(1):12. doi: 10.3390/polym13010012.

Authors

Wei-Chih Wang^{1

2

3

4}, Yen-Tse Cheng³, Benjamin Estroff¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
² Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
³ Power Mechanical Engineering and National Tsinghua University, Hsinchu City 300, Taiwan.
⁴ Institute of Nanoengineering and Microsystems, National Tsinghua University, Hsinchu City 300, Taiwan.

Abstract

Electrospinning polymer fibers is a well-understood process primarily resulting in random mats or single strands. More recent systems and methods have produced nanofiber yarns (NFY) for ease of use in textiles. This paper presents a method of NFY manufacture using a simplified dry electrospinning system to produce self-assembling functional NFY capable of conducting electrical charge. The polymer is a mixture of cellulose nanocrystals (CNC), polyvinyl acrylate (PVA) and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS). When treated with ethylene glycol (EG) to enhance conductivity, fibers touching the collector plate align to the applied electrostatic field and grow by twisting additional nanofiber polymers injected by the jet into the NFY bundle. The longer the electrospinning continues, the longer and more uniformly twisted the NFY becomes. This process has the added benefit of reducing the electric field required for NFY production from >2.43 kV cm^-1 to 1.875 kV cm^-1.

Keywords: conductive nanofiber; electrospinning; fabrics/textiles; polymer fibers; textile composites.