Melt Electrospinning of PET and Composite PET-Aerogel Fibers: An Experimental and Modeling Study

Increasingly advanced applications of polymer fibers are driving the demand for new,high-performance fiber types. One way to produce polymer fibers is by electrospinning frompolymer solutions and melts. Polymer melt electrospinning produces fibers with small diametersthrough solvent-free processing and has applications within different fields, ranging from textileand construction, to the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. Modeling of the electrospinningprocess has been mainly limited to simulations of geometry-dependent electric field distributions.The associated large change in viscosity upon fiber formation and elongation is a key issue governingthe electrospinning process, apart from other environmental factors. This paper investigates the meltelectrospinning of aerogel-containing fibers and proposes a logistic viscosity model approach withparametric ramping in a finite element method (FEM) simulation. The formation of melt electrospunfibers is studied with regard to the spinning temperature and the distance to the collector. The formation of PET-Aerogel composite fibers by pneumatic transport is demonstrated, and the criticalparameter is found to be the temperature of the gas phase. The experimental results form the basisfor the electrospinning model, which is shown to reproduce the trend for the fiber diameter, both forpolymer as well as polymer-aerogel composites.