Oriented electrospun nanofibers on stand-alone multi-segmented cylindrical collectors

Single-segment collectors, commonly used in electrospinning, distribute nanofibers randomly over their entire length. To improve the orientation of resultant nanofibers, a multi-segmented collector has been developed having alternate conducting and nonconducting segments. The alignment principle is based upon the attraction of nanofibers towards conductive segments, while the nonconductive segments, having least attraction for nanofibers, do not pull the fibers toward themselves. This causes the nanofibers to stretch over the nonconductive segments, thanks to attractive forces from the adjacent conductive segments. The best orientation was obtained on the cylindrical collector with 12.5 mm nonconductive segment length, 20 mm conductive segment length and 11% polymer concentration. Different polymeric materials can be electrospun on these types of multi-segmented collectors with high fiber orientation for various applications.