TY - JOUR
T1 - Solvent vapor annealing
T2 - An efficient approach for inscribing secondary nanostructures onto electrospun fibers
AU - Liu, Jianzhao
AU - Bauer, Adam J.P.
AU - Li, Bingbing
PY - 2014/9
Y1 - 2014/9
N2 - Solvent vapor annealing (SVA) is originally developed to attain equilibrium nanostructures from microphase-separated block polymer thin films. Interestingly, by carefully choosing a solvent vapor that can selectively mobilize the amorphous chains of a semicrystalline polymer while preserving the integrity of its crystalline structure, this study demonstrates that the SVA method can also be utilized to introduce hierarchical structures onto semicrystalline polymer-based materials. This study on electrospun poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) fibers clearly shows that acetone, a poor solvent for PCL, can effectively delocalize the amorphous chains and redeposit them onto the pre-existing crystal edges, giving rise to secondary nanostructures inscribed onto the PCL fibers. In the past decade, various fiber fabrication methods and numerous fiber products are reported. The easy one-step approach reported here provides new insight into the design and fabrication of structurally hierarchical polymeric materials.
AB - Solvent vapor annealing (SVA) is originally developed to attain equilibrium nanostructures from microphase-separated block polymer thin films. Interestingly, by carefully choosing a solvent vapor that can selectively mobilize the amorphous chains of a semicrystalline polymer while preserving the integrity of its crystalline structure, this study demonstrates that the SVA method can also be utilized to introduce hierarchical structures onto semicrystalline polymer-based materials. This study on electrospun poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) fibers clearly shows that acetone, a poor solvent for PCL, can effectively delocalize the amorphous chains and redeposit them onto the pre-existing crystal edges, giving rise to secondary nanostructures inscribed onto the PCL fibers. In the past decade, various fiber fabrication methods and numerous fiber products are reported. The easy one-step approach reported here provides new insight into the design and fabrication of structurally hierarchical polymeric materials.
KW - electrospinning
KW - poly(ε-caprolactone)
KW - secondary nanostructures
KW - solvent vapor annealing
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84906948955&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1002/marc.201400274
DO - 10.1002/marc.201400274
M3 - Article
C2 - 25042883
AN - SCOPUS:84906948955
VL - 35
SP - 1503
EP - 1508
JO - Macromolecular Rapid Communications
JF - Macromolecular Rapid Communications
SN - 1022-1336
IS - 17
ER -