Investigation on fibre diameter, wettability and tensile behaviour of electrospun polyacrylonitrile nanofibres

One of the major concerns in membrane distillation technology is membrane wettability. Surface functionalization using superhydrophobic electrospun nanofibre material is thought to be feasible and effective to overcome the issue. However, further understanding on characteristic and mechanical behaviour of electrospun fibres is required. This paper studied the effect of different electrospinning parameters on fibre diameter, wettability, and tensile behaviour of polyacrylonitrile electrospun nanofibres. Polyacrylonitrile in dimethyl-formamide solution of 10 wt.% concentration was electrospun under different applied voltages and electrospinning distances. The characteristic and behaviour of PAN electrospun nanofibres were characterised by using scanning electron microscope, water contact angle method and tensile test. Based on scanning electron micrographs, the average fibre diameters were in the range of nanometre. It was also observed that increasing the applied voltage would increase the fibre diameter, meanwhile, increasing the distance between spinneret and grounded collector would decrease fibre diameter and fibre deposition rate. The average contact angle and the tensile strength of PAN electrospun nanofibres also was determined in this study. The results from this study provide crucial information for the development of new filtration material for membrane distillation.