TECHNOLOGY SUMMARY

The ability to engineer strong nanofiber materials is of great interest in numerous fields including aerospace, automotive, biomedical and construction. Electrospinning is a simple method capable of producing polymer nanofibers. It is observed in conventionally manufactured and electrospun fibers that mechanical strength increases when diameter is reduced. However, electrospun nanofibers are weaker than conventionally manufactured fibers, despite greatly reduced diameters. This lack of mechanical strength in electrospun fibers is attributed to the absence of post-processing stages, such as drawing and tensioning, which are commonly used in fiber production to increase strength by 5-15x. The Automated-Track design is able to overcome the limitations of electrospinning by implementing a processing stage capable of simultaneous collection and drawing fibers. This design is able to draw individual fibers immediately as they are collected, tightly control processing parameters, and process thousands of nanofibers at once. This approach successfully combines electrospinning and a critical post-processing stage and has shown to increase the ultimate tensile strength of polycaprolactone fibers by 7.4x and polyacrylonitrile fibers by 4.5x. The method is compatible with most polymers which can be collected across parallel plates and is anticipated to be compatible with high-throughput methods for scalability.

AREA/MATURITY/AWARDS

Primary Application Area: Manufacturing, Instrumentation

Technology Development Status: Prototype

Technology Readiness Level: TRL 5

SHOWCASE SUMMARY

Organization Type: Academic/Gov Lab

Showcase Booth #: 411

Website: https://www.rowan.edu/home/

GOVT/EXTERNAL FUNDING SOURCES

External Funding to Date: NSF 1561966
NSF 1653329