Image of the Week: Direct writing using 3D printed, melt electrospun fibres

By Georgia Longstaff on October 16, 2017

Top photos show photographs of single fibres fabricated by melt electropinning, with collector speeds of a) 0.4 m min−1, b) 0.8 m min-1, c) 1 m min-1. Lower photo shows a 3D structure of NWPU (for Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, where this work took place) which was prepared in a direct-writing way using thirty layers of melt electrospinning. Image taken from Feng-Li He et al 2017 J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 50 425601, © IOP Publishing, All Rights Reserved.

Top images show photographs of single fibres fabricated through melt electrospinning, with collector speeds of (a) 0.4 m min⁻¹, (b) 0.8 m min⁻¹, (c) 1 m min⁻¹. Lower photo shows a 3D structure of ‘NWPU’ (for Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, where this work took place) which was prepared in a direct-writing way using thirty layers of melt electrospinning. Image taken from Feng-Li He et al 2017 J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 50 425601, © IOP Publishing, All Rights Reserved.

This week’s Image of the Week comes from JPhysD article ‘Investigation of the effects of melt electrospinning parameters on the direct-writing fiber size using orthogonal design’, Feng-Li He et al 2017 J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 50 425601. Melt electrospinning is an effective and simple technique used in the fabrication of polymer fibres, with a wide range of applications in a number of areas, such as in the textiles industry, in biological applications, and in environmental monitoring.

In this paper the authors investigate the effect of a variety of parameters on the diameters of melt electrospun fibres. These parameters include temperature, needle gauge, flow rate, and collector speed. The image above shows photographs of single fibres fabricated at a variety of collector speeds, in addition to a picture of ‘NWPU’ (standing for the institution where the work took place: Northwestern Polytechnical University) which was produced through 3D printing in a direct-writing way, using 30 layers of the single fibres shown above.