I am electrospinning polystyrene, up until now i used dmf as the solvent but due to the high bp of dmf it does not completely evaporate resulting in thick/webbed fibers.
I tried using DMSO, but polystyrene did not dissolve in it. I know of solvents like toluene, chloroform but both of these have low dielectric constants so im not inclined towards using them.
Suggestions please...
Dear Aisha,
I found that you ask a lot of questions about basics of electrospinning... There is a bunch of really good review papers, for instance http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20100560 regarding the subject of your questions. They even discuss some electrospinning parameters based on polystyrene solutions. Try to use the already published knowledge ;)
Best regards,
Michał W.
You can refer to the following papers:
G. Eda and S. Shivkumar, “Bead-to-Fiber Transition in Electrospun Polystyrene”Journal of Applied Polymer Science 106 (2007) 475-487.
Goki Eda, Satya Shivkumar,Journal of Materials Science, 2006, Volume 41, Issue 17, pp 5704-5708.
Dichloromethane should work well for you but then again it has low dielectric constant. If are not too keen on getting sub 2-3 micron fibers, you can try that.
These comments look solid, so go ahead and try them first. But if you're having trouble still, you may want to consider a blend of solvents. You can choose something that dissolves PS well and is reasonably volatile for the major component, then spike it with something miscible that has a better dielectric constant. If the concentration of the minor component is low enough, it may not matter if it's high-boiling. The trick is to find the solvent combination and polymer concentration that spins, stays in solution long enough to spin, and doesn't cause too much fusion. I haven't ever spun PS specifically, but we use this method frequently for a variety of polymers we're trying to spin for the first time.
Also, depending on how high-boiling your solvent is, you may be able to prevent some of fiber fusion by immediately placing spun constructs into vacuum for a few hours (maybe with a little heat too.) Good luck!
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