Direct Fabrication of Highly Nanoporous Polystyrene Fibers via Electrospinning

A direct approach for fabricating nanoporous polymer Fibers via electrospinning has been demonstrated. Polystyrene (PS) fibers with micro- and nanoporous structures both in the core and/or on the fiber surfaces were electrospun in a single process by varying solvent compositions and solution concentrations of the PS solutions. The porous structures of the fibrous mats were characterized by held emission scanning electron microscopy and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller measurements to confirm that they could be accurately controlled by tuning vapor pressure of tetrahydrofuran (THF) and N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) solvent mixtures and PS concentrations in the solutions. As the solution concentration decreased, the average fiber diameter decreased, whereas the bead density increased dramatically to show a beads-on-string morphology. Both the specific surface area and pore volume of the Fibrous mats showed a unimodal distributions centered at 1/3 THF/DMF mix ratio. Fibers formed from 5 wt% PS in the 1/3 THF and DMF mixtures had the largest specific surface area of 54.92 m(2) g(-1) and a pore volume of 0.318 cm(3) g(-1), respectively,