Fluffy Polypropylene–Polyethylene glycol fabrics with branched micro- and nanofibrous structures for rapid liquid transport
Graphical abstract
Section snippets
Introductions
The rising demand for thin wound dressings for wet healing promotes the development of fibrous products with efficient liquid-transportation capacity [1,2]. It is well known that liquid-transportation behavior is a complex phenomenon, which involves both horizontal wetting and vertical penetration across the fabrics. According to Darcy's law and Laplace pressure, the structural parameters of the fabric, such as fiber diameter, fiber size distribution, porosity, and fiber orientation, have great
Materials
PP chips with a melt-flow index of 152.5 g/min (6.2 kg, 240 °C) were purchased from Hunan Shengjin New Material (Yueyang, China). PEG powder (molecular weight: 3600–4400) was provided by Jiangsu Haian Petroleum Chemical Factory (Haian, China). A hydrophilic finishing agent with a viscosity of 1030 mPa was purchased from Goulston Technologies (Monroe, NC, USA). All these materials were used as received.
Fabrication of micro- and nanofibrous fabrics
The corresponding micro- and nanosized fluffy fabrics with branched structure were fabricated
Leaf-vein model
The leaf-vein model (Fig. 1b) is a typical branched network (Fig. 1c) obtained from the water-transport system of leaves. The model comprises a network of main veins (first branch) connecting multiple secondary branches (second branch) and ultrafine veins (third branch) [[33], [34], [35]]. The water-transport efficiency in the branched vein network is improved by the structural differences of pulse sequences obeying capillary force, such as vessel diameter and density. Regarding the water
Conclusion
A fluffy PP/PEG micro- and nanofibrous fabric with a branched network was prepared for high-performance moisture capabilities based on the bioinspiration from leaf veins in nature. The branched network morphology of the micro- and nanofibrous fabrics was acquired by introducing an incompatible PEG into the PP during the melt-blowing process. A fluffy structure with porosity ranging from 87.1% to 90.1% was achieved by adjusting the DCD from 10 cm to 30 cm. Benefiting from their branched
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledge
This work was supported by China Scholarship Council (201808410565), National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFB0309100), Key Research Projects of Henan Higher Education Institutions (20A540001), Collaborative Innovation Center of Textile and garment industry, Henan Province (2017CYY005), Henan Key Laboratory of Medical Polymer Materials Technology and Application (1-TR-B-03-190227) and ZhongYuan University of Technology (2018XQG04, K2018QN011).
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