A Study On The Electrospinning Behaviour And Nanofibre Morphology Of Anionically Charged Lignin

¹Bioproducts Discovery and Development Centre, Department of Plant Agriculture, University of Guelph, Guelph, N1G 2W1, ON, Canada

²School of Engineering, University of Guelph, Guelph, N1G 2W1, ON, Canada

³Department of Physics, University of Guelph, Guelph, N1G 2W1, ON, Canada

⁴Department of Chemistry, University of Guelph, Guelph, N1G 2W1, ON, Canada

Adv. Mater. Lett., 2012, 'ICNANO 2011', 3 (6), pp 476-480

DOI: 10.5185/amlett.2012.icnano.336

Publication Date (Web): Sep 23, 2012

Copyright © IAAM-VBRI Press

E-mail: mmisra@uoguelph.ca

Abstract

The electrospinnability of anionically charged sodium carbonate lignin using positive-voltage electrospinning was explored. The lignin was mixed with polyethylene oxide (PEO) in order to enhance the electrospinning performance by improving the viscoelastic properties. Lignin fibres containing varying concentrations of lignin were obtained by employing various applied voltages. The effect of increased lignin content on the electrospinning behaviour and the obtained fibre morphologies were observed. The electrospun fibres were characterised using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to investigate their microstructure. SEM analysis showed the formation of well defined lignin fibres and the results indicate that the morphologies are highly depend on the PEO:lignin composition.

Keywords

Lignin, electrospinning, beading, net charge density, carbon fibres, viscosity, SEM.