Fabrication of submicron fibres by meltblowing and melt electrospinning

Fabrication of nanofibres has become a growing area of research because of their unique properties (i.e. smaller fibre diameter and higher surface area) and their potential applications in various fields such as filtration, composites and biomedical applications. Although several processes exist for fabrication of nanofibres, electrospinning is considered to be the simplest. Most of the research in this area is based on solution electrospinning rather than melt electrospi1ming. The feasibility of fabricat ing nanofibres of polypropylene (PP) by meltblowing and melt electrospinning has been investigated in this paper. In melt blowing dj ffere nt fluids such as air and water were fed at different inJets along the extrusion barrel for the fabrication of nanofibres whereas in melt electrospinning it was achieved by using different additives. The results obtained by using water in meltblowing were better with respect to the morphology and fibre uniformity compared to air. Ln melt electrospi1ming a lthough all the additives (i.e. sodiwn oleate (SO), polyethylene glycol (PEG) and polydimethyl siloxane (PDMS)) helped in reducing the fibre diameter, only SO was effective to reduce the diameter down to nanoscale. It was concluded that both the solvent-free processes have the potential to substantially increase the production of nanofibres compared to solution electrospinning