Fabrication of Nanoporous Fibers via Bubble Electrospinning

Recently, nanoporous fibers have been caught much attention as the most promising material in nanotechnology. To our knowledge, nanoporous materials have extremely high surface area and are widely used in different fields, such as filtration, radiation protection, catalysis, sensors, tissue engineering, and drug delivery [1-2]. Electrospinning is an effective method, which can fabricate polymer nanofibers and nanoporous fibers as well. The relatively high production rate, and simplicity of the setup make electrospinning very attractive to both academia and industry. He et al. produced nanoporous microspheres by electrospinning and established mathematical models for formation process [3, 4]. Some literature reported various fabrication processes for nanoporous materials [5, 6]. In this paper, nanofibers with nanopores on the surface are produced by bubble electrospinning of poly(lactic acid) (PLA) and 0.1% of nanosized Fe3O4 (particle size = 20 nm) mixed with CHCl3(CF). The formation mechanisms of nanoporous fibers are discussed and researched. These nanoporous fibers may offer an alternative for new nanotechnology applications.