Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research

Title

Mechanism of Adhesion Between Polymer Fibers at Nanoscale Contacts

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-21-2012

Abstract

Adhesive force exists between polymer nano/microfibers. An elaborate experiment was performed to investigate the adhesion between polymer nano/microfibers using a nanoforce tensile tester. Electrospun polycaprolactone (PCL) fibers with diameters ranging from 0.4–2.2 μm were studied. The response of surface property of electrospun fiber to the environmental conditions was tracked by FTIR and atomic force microscopy (AFM) measurements. The effect of temperature on molecular orientation was examined by wide angle X-ray diffraction (WAXD). The adhesive force was found to increase with temperature and pull-off speed but insensitive to the change of relative humidity, and the abrupt increase of adhesion energy with temperature accompanied by a reduced molecular orientation in the amorphous part of fiber was observed. Results show that adhesion is mainly driven by van der Waals interactions between interdiffusion chain segments across the interface.

Publication Title

Langmuir

Volume

28

Issue

10

First Page

4663

Last Page

4671

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS