Abstract:

The paper presents a new way for producing fibrous mats with aligned micro- and nanofibres by electrospinning technique using a fast rotating filter basket of a properly adapted commercial centrifugal juicer as the collecting electrode. This method was used to obtain the fibrous materials from polylactide (PLA) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) with different degrees of fibres aligned depending on the linear velocity of the rotating substrate. The highest degree of the fibre alignment, measured by the planar orientation factor, with a value of 0.8 - 0.9, was obtained at the linear speeds of the rotating substrate in the range of 22 - 36 m/s. Using the gravimetric method, the velocity of fibre formation during electrospinning was tested under different conditions, i.e. at the immobile substrate as well as rapidly rotating, reaching values ranging from 4 to 200 m/s. The investigations suggest that electrospinning of the fibres on the rapidly rotating substrate is not only a modification of their receiving, but also significantly changes the nature of the fibre formation in this spinning technique.