Polyacrylonitrile and polylactic acid blend nanofibre spinning using needleless electrospinning technique

Abstract

In this work, polyacrylonitrile (PAN) and polylactic acid (PLA) blended polymers have been used to prepare a flexible and partially biodegradable electrospun nanofibre sheet suitable for filtration application. Also, acetone has been used as a replacement of dimethyl formamide (DMF) during spinning and a needleless (wire electrode) electrospinning machine has been used for filament preparation. Initially, PAN fibre is spun with DMF and various parameters, such as polymer concentration, voltage, distance between electrodes and RH%, are standardised. With these standard parameters, PLA is then added with PAN, and PLA concentration is optimised without affecting the desired fibre diameter. Further, the amount of acetone with DMF is also standardised without affecting the fibre diameter. Finally, polymer concentration of 2.5% PAN with 0.5% of PLA, a potential difference of 55 kV, electrode distance of 125mm at 35% RH and 10% acetone are found suitable for getting the desired nanofibre with minimum diameter.