Progress of Fabrication and Applications of Electrospun Hierarchically Porous Nanofibers

In recent years, electrospun nanofibers have attracted great attention for their facile adjustable structure, morphology feature and chemical composition. Especially, significant interest has been devoted to the development of electrospun nanofibers with multiscale pores from micropores and mesopores to macropores, owing to their large specific surface area, hierarchical pore structures, abundant active sites and many other unique properties and applications. This review presents an overview on the design strategies, preparation methods, physical properties and applications of electrospun hierarchical porous nanofibers. At first, electrospinning fabrication of nanofibers with different types of pores including micropores, mesopores, macropores and hierarchical pores are introduced. Then the structures, properties of electrospun porous nanofibers and their applications in several important areas, such as catalysis, energy storage, adsorption and separation, heat insulation and flame retardant, sound absorption and wave absorption, sensor and biomedical are summarized. At last, challenges and potential opportunities of electrospun porous nanofibers in the future are highlighted.