A comparative study on SiO2 nanofiber production via two novel non-electrospinning methods: Centrifugal spinning vs solution blowing

A comparative study on the production of nanofibrous silica (SiO2) mats via facile and innovative non-electro-spinning routes, solution blowing (SB) and centrifugal spinning (CS), and their subsequent calcination is presented. In all cases, highly flexible membranes composed of amorphous SiO2 were obtained after calcination. This includes the first reported synthesis of SiO2 fibers by the SB technique. The structure, composition, and porosity of the as-spun and calcined fibers were characterized. The results indicated that CS afforded a more homogeneous and defect-free fibrous structure, although the average fiber diameter was found to be higher than those obtained from SB. Thus, SB provides more compact SiO2 fibrous mat which resulted in smaller pore size. The lower fiber diameter and pore size of the SB-SiO2 mats renders them more suited to filtration and separation applications, whilst the fluffier CS-SiO2 outputs would be advantageously adopted for thermal insulation applications. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.