Electrospinning multi-layered nano-solenoid and reticular micro-tubular structure on a microfiber

Abstract Collecting electrospun fibers via rotating collectors has been widely used, however this method is mainly used for obtaining aligned fibers and the radial dimensions of collectors are in macro-scale in order to match the speed of the ejected fiber with that of the collector. As the nanotechnology develops, it is desirable to reduce the collectors into micro/nano-scale and fabricate regular architectures on it. Here, we report a simple and general method to wind electrospun micro/nanofibers made of various materials including polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP), zinc acetate/PVP composite (ZnAc/PVP) and as-electrospun 0.5Ba(Zr 0.2 Ti 0.8 )O 3 –0.5(Ba 0.7 Ca 0.3 )TiO 3 (BZT–BCT) (a mixture of PVP and organometallic compounds containing elements Ba, Ca, Zr and Ti, hereafter denoted as as-electrospun BZT–BCT) around a rotating microfiber served as a collector. By adjusting the collector's rotating speed, multi-layered nano-solenoid made of ZnAc/PVP nanofibers or as-electrospun BZT–BCT nanofibers and reticular micro-tubular structures made of as-electrospun BZT–BCT nanofibers were obtained, respectively. These structures have the potential applications in nano-mechanical, nano-electromagnetic devices and tissue engineering.