The Spinning State and Nanofiber Orientation of the Yarn Produced by a Novel Multi-Needles Electrospinning

Electrospinning is one of the few simple and effective ways to produce nanofibers, which can be used in various fields. However, the common assembled nanofiber mats are limited in some areas, so static bath was used as the negative collector to produce nanofiber yarns. In order to improve the yields, a novel multi-needle electrospinning using static bath collector was employed, the spinning state and the nanofiber orientation of the as-spun yarns in different numbers of spinning needles are described in details. The results showed that the critical voltages, keeping the electrospinning process stable, increased from 21KV to 28KV with the number of spinning needles increasing from 1-5. Nevertheless, the orientation degrees of the nanofibers in the yarn decreased from 94.40% to 81.29%. Based on the SEM images and orientation degrees of the yarns, the alignment of the nanofibers along the axis of the yarn was seemed still pretty well when the 1-4 needles used. But it was seemed a little disordered when the number of needles reached 5, which was not so well for applications.