PA6 nanofibre production:A comparison between rotary jet spinning and electrospinning

Polymer nanofibres are created from many different techniques, with varying rates of production. Rotary jet spinning is a relatively new technique for making nanofibres from both polymer solutions and melt. With electrospinning being by far the most widespread processing method for polymer nanofibres, we performed a direct comparison of polyamide 6 (PA6) nanofibre production between these two methods. It was found that electrospinning produced slightly smaller-diameter fibres, which scaled with a decrease in solution viscosity. In comparison, rotary jet spun fibres could be produced from a reduced range of polymer concentrations and exhibited therefore slightly larger diameters with greater variation. Crystallinity of the fibres was also compared between the two techniques and the bulk polymer, which showed a decrease in crystallinity compared to bulk PA6.