Preliminary study on solvent effect in fiber fabrication in near-field electrospinning

• Main Authors: Pisut Koomsap, Sudipta Bain
• Other Authors: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Progress in Additive Manufacturing (Pro-AM 2016)
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: ESRP; Near-field electrospinning
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/84394; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/41764
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Recently, near-field electrospinning (NFES) has been applied in additive manufacturing (AM) for the creation of scaffolds with controllable patterns from a polymer solution. Although the patterns can be achieved, fibers are deposited in liquid form due to insufficient solidification time. The buildup of the third dimension remains a challenge for this technique using a short standoff distance. This paper presents a preliminary study concerning the influence of solvents on the solidification of the fibers formed. Dimethylformamide (DMF) and Dichloromethane (DCM) having much different boiling points were two solvents used in this investigation. Results shows that the boiling temperature of the solvent had influence on the solidification of the fibers leading to different obtained diameters. DCM having much lower boiling temperature delivered the thinner fibers than DMF.