Characterization of micromanipulator controlled dry spinning of micro- and nanoscale polymer fibers

No current microfabrication technique exists for producing room-temperature, high-precision, point-to-point polymer nanofibers in three dimensions. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to characterize a novel method for fabricating such structures. Poly-methylmethacrylate (PMMA) microand nano-fibers have been fabricated using a technique which involves drawing a solvated polymer bridge between two liquid pools with a stylus positioned by an ultra-high-precision micromill. The solvent in the solution bridge rapidly evaporates, leaving a suspended PMMA fiber between the two pools. It was observed that fibers ranging in diameter from 450 nm to 50 μm were drawn and that fiber diameter increased significantly with increasing solution concentration and increasing polymer molecular weight.