pps proceeding - Abstract Preview
pps proceeding
Symposium: S17 - Special: CREPEC Student Symposium
Oral Presentation
 
 

Uniformizing the Electric Field using Lateral Wall Auxiliary Electrodes in Multi-Needle Electrospinning

Beaudoin Etienne (1)*

(1) Ecole de technologie superieure - Quebec - Canada

Electrospinning has gained a lot of attention in recent years due to this process easily producing high quality polymeric nanofibers. Multi-needle electrospinning is a quick and easy way to scale-up this processing technique, which suffers from limited production capacity. However, challenges remain with this implementation, partly due to the uneven electric field distribution resulting from the Coulombic repulsion between the charged jets and needles. In this work, the uniformization of the electric field for a linear array of twenty needles was performed using lateral charged walls as auxiliary electrodes. Finite element simulation (FEA) was used to analyze the impact of the auxiliary electrodes on the electric field intensity under each needle. The effect of the auxiliary electrodes was also studied by comparing the semi-vertical angle of the spun jets as well as the deposition area of the fibers. Implementing parallel lateral walls as auxiliary electrodes were shown to help achieve uniformization of the electric field, of the semi-vertical angle of the spun jet, as well as in the fiber deposition area for the multi-needle electrospinning process. The high quality morphology of polymer nanofibers obtained by this improved process was confirmed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM).