Needle-disk electrospinning inspired by natural point discharge

Point discharge is a natural phenomenon which principle and application are both under active investigation. In this work, a needle-disk electrode spinneret was designed through the combination of the point discharge concept and the merits of typical needleless electrospinning (disk as spinneret). The desired outcome for point electrode system is to produce a controllable process of jet formation, with respect to the control of jet site and amount of jets under a lower applied voltage value. Two comparisons were used: (i) in comparison to the typical needleless electrospinning method (disk electrospinning), the needle-disk electrospinning produce finer and more uniform nanofibers. Further numerical simulation results confirmed that the needle-disk electrode induced electric field intensity which is 5.33 times higher than that of disk electrode under the same parameters; (ii) both the numerical simulation and experimental results showed that needle-disk electrospinning can produce competitive quality of nanofibers accompanied by enhanced throughput, compared with the traditional single-needle electrospinning method. Finally, we demonstrate that needle-disk electrospinning produces nanofiber with super-high throughput of 13.5 g/h, which is 183 times higher than traditional electrospinning under similar spinning conditions.