A novel approach for preparation of aligned electrospun polyacrylonitrile nanofibers

In this Letter, a new type of collector named ‘rotating grid collector’ was introduced and its capability in aligning the nanofibers was examined. The results showed that electrospinning using rotating grid collector could produce well aligned fibers with fiber alignment percent of 76%. It was found that in a constant solution flow rate increasing collector rotation speed and eccentric distance improved the fiber alignments. Having prepared the fiber textiles, we found that increasing the rotation speed improved the tensile strength of the fiber textile. This new collector is promising for future application in aligning nanofibers.