Abstract A method for the fabrication of homogeneous and well-dispersed polymeric nanofiber composites was investigated. Nanofiber fillers can be used to produce polymeric nanocomposites by mixing the fillers to base polymers, eventually enhancing the mechanical property of the matrix polymers. To produce such composites, nanofibers were usually sandwiched by molten matrix polymers at high temperature before molding. The traditional so-called sandwich method, however, was found to produce rather biased and inhomogeneous composites due largely to the solid entanglement of the nanofibers. In this work, unwoven polymer nanofibers were synthesized through electrospinning by controlling the electrostatic repulsion of the nanofibers. We modified the electrospinning apparatus for the direct synthesis of homogenous composites: nanofibers were electrospun and directly ejected from the electrospinning syringe to the matrix polymer solution (not in a solid state), where a regular metal electrode plate was replaced by an optimized metal container containing the base polymer solution. It was found that this new fabrication method could realize homogeneous mixing of the nanofibers that were eventually uniformly dispersed in the polymer solution. Poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) was used for nanofibers and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) was used for polymer matrix. The field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) revealed the homogeneous and well-dispersed PVA nanofibers in the resulting PDMS composites. The composites also presented higher mechanical properties as compared with the composites fabricated by the traditional sandwich method.

中文翻译：

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通过静电纺丝均匀分散的聚合物纳米纤维复合材料：聚（乙烯醇）纳米纤维/聚二甲基硅氧烷复合材料

摘要 研究了一种制备均匀且分散良好的聚合物纳米纤维复合材料的方法。通过将填料与基础聚合物混合，纳米纤维填料可用于生产聚合物纳米复合材料，最终提高基体聚合物的机械性能。为了生产这种复合材料，纳米纤维通常在成型前在高温下被熔融的基体聚合物夹在中间。然而，人们发现传统的所谓夹心法会产生相当偏向和不均匀的复合材料，这主要是由于纳米纤维的固体缠结。在这项工作中，通过控制纳米纤维的静电排斥，通过静电纺丝合成了无纺聚合物纳米纤维。我们修改了静电纺丝装置以直接合成均质复合材料：纳米纤维被静电纺丝并直接从静电纺丝注射器喷射到基质聚合物溶液（非固态）中，在那里常规金属电极板被含有基础聚合物溶液的优化金属容器取代。发现这种新的制造方法可以实现纳米纤维的均匀混合，最终均匀分散在聚合物溶液中。聚（乙烯醇）（PVA）用于纳米纤维，聚二甲基硅氧烷（PDMS）用于聚合物基质。场发射扫描电子显微镜 (FE-SEM) 显示所得 PDMS 复合材料中存在均匀且分散良好的 PVA 纳米纤维。与传统夹层法制备的复合材料相比，该复合材料还具有更高的机械性能。