Fabrication, Microstructures and Sensor Applications of Highly Ordered Electrospun Nanofibers: A Review

The review summarizes the fabrication, microstructures, and sensor applications of highly ordered electrospun nanofibers. In the traditional electrospinning process, electrospun nanofibers usually have disordered or random microstructures due to the chaotic oscillation of the electrospinning jet. Different electrospinning methods can be formed by introducing external forces, such as magnetic, electric, or mechanical forces, and ordered nanofibers can be collected. The microstructures of highly ordered nanofibers can be divided into three categories: uniaxially ordered nanofibers, biaxially ordered nanofibers and ordered scaffolds. The three microstructures are each characterized by being ordered in different dimensions. The regulation and control of the ordered microstructures can promote electrospun nanofibers' mechanical and dielectric strength, surface area and chemical properties. Highly ordered electrospun nanofibers have more comprehensive applications than disordered nanofibers do in effect transistors, gas sensors, reinforced composite materials and tissue engineering. This review also intensively summarizes the applications of highly ordered nanofibers in the sensor field, such as pressure sensors, humidity sensors, strain sensors, gas sensors, and biosensors.

State-of-the-art review of advanced electrospun nanofiber yarn-based textiles for biomedical applications

The pandemic of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has made biotextiles, including face masks and protective clothing, quite familiar in our daily lives. Biotextiles are one broad category of textile products that are beyond our imagination. Currently, biotextiles have been routinely utilized in various biomedical fields, like daily protection, wound healing, tissue regeneration, drug delivery, and sensing, to improve the health and medical conditions of individuals. However, these biotextiles are commonly manufactured with fibers with diameters on the micrometer scale (> 10 μm). Recently, nanofibrous materials have aroused extensive attention in the fields of fiber science and textile engineering because the fibers with nanoscale diameters exhibited obviously superior performances, such as size and surface/interface effects as well as optical, electrical, mechanical, and biological properties, compared to microfibers. A combination of innovative electrospinning techniques and traditional textile-forming strategies opens a new window for the generation of nanofibrous biotextiles to renew and update traditional microfibrous biotextiles. In the last two decades, the conventional electrospinning device has been widely modified to generate nanofiber yarns (NYs) with the fiber diameters less than 1000 nm. The electrospun NYs can be further employed as the primary processing unit for manufacturing a new generation of nano-textiles using various textile-forming strategies. In this review, starting from the basic information of conventional electrospinning techniques, we summarize the innovative electrospinning strategies for NY fabrication and critically discuss their advantages and limitations. This review further covers the progress in the construction of electrospun NY-based nanotextiles and their recent applications in biomedical fields, mainly including surgical sutures, various scaffolds and implants for tissue engineering, smart wearable bioelectronics, and their current and potential applications in the COVID-19 pandemic. At the end, this review highlights and identifies the future needs and opportunities of electrospun NYs and NY-based nanotextiles for clinical use.

Fabrication of Multilayered Nanofiber Scaffolds with a Highly Aligned Nanofiber Yarn for Anisotropic Tissue Regeneration

Nanofibrous scaffolds were widely studied to construct scaffold for various fields of tissue engineering due to their ability to mimic a native extracellular matrix (ECM). However, generally, an electrospun nanofiber exhibited a two-dimensional (2D) membrane form with a densely packed structure, which inhibited the formation of a bulk tissue in a three-dimensional (3D) structure. The appearance of a nanofiber yarn (NFY) made it possible to further process the electrospun nanofiber into the desired fabric for specific tissue regeneration. Here, poly(l-lactic acid) (PLLA) NFYs composed of a highly aligned nanofiber were prepared via a dual-nozzle electrospinning setup. Afterward, a noobing technique was applied to fabricate multilayered scaffolds with three orthogonal sets of PLLA NFYs, without interlacing them. Thus the constituent NFYs of the fabric were free of any crimp, apart from the binding yarn, which was used to maintain the integrity of the noobing scaffold. Remarkably, the highly aligned PLLA NFY expressed strengthened mechanical properties than that of a random film, which also promoted the cell adhesion on the NFY scaffold with unidirectional topography and less spreading bodies. In vitro experiments indicated that cells cultured on a noobing NFY scaffold showed a higher proliferation rate during long culture period. The controllable pore structure formed by the vertically arrayed NFY could allow the cell to penetrate through the thickness of the 3D scaffold, distributed uniformly in each layer. The topographic clues guided the orientation of H9C2 cells, forming tissues on different layers in two perpendicular directions. With NFY as the building blocks, noobing and/or 3D weaving methods could be applied in the fabrication of more complex 3D scaffolds applied in anisotropic tissues or organs regeneration.

Flexible sandwich-shaped composite film with simultaneous double electrically conductive anisotropy, magnetism and dual-color fluorescence

Flexible sandwich-shaped composite film with simultaneous double electrically conductive anisotropy, magnetism and dual-color fluorescence was successfully constructed via electrospinning.

Janus nanofiber array pellicle: facile conjugate electrospinning construction, structure and bifunctionality of enhanced green fluorescence and adjustable magnetism

A [Fe₃O₄/polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP)]//[Tb(BA)₃phen/PVP] Janus nanofiber array pellicle (denoted JNAP) was successfully constructed by facile conjugate electrospinning without twisting for the first time. The JNAP offers the dual-functionality of fluorescence and magnetism. This technology entirely solves the dilemma of the magnetic spinning dope and fluorescent spinning dope being easily mixed together during the parallel electrospinning process, as it achieves complete segregation of magnetic nanoparticles and fluorescent molecules. Moreover, conjugate electrospinning without twisting has fewer requirements on the viscosity of the spinning dope compared with parallel electrospinning, in which the two spinning dopes should have the same viscosity. It was satisfactorily found that the JNAP has higher fluorescence intensity than the corresponding non-aligned Janus nanofiber pellicle. The magnetism of the JNAP could be tailored by changing the doping amount of the Fe₃O₄ NPs. The JNAP has potential applications in nanotechnology and biomedicine, etc., due to its enhanced green fluorescence and adjustable magnetism. In addition, this design concept and manufacturing process provide a facile way for preparing other one-dimensional Janus nanomaterials with multifunctionality.

A [Fe₃O₄/PVP]//[Tb(BA)₃phen/PVP] Janus nanofiber array pellicle with enhanced green fluorescence and adjustable magnetism dual-functionality was constructed via facile conjugate electrospinning.

High pairing rate Janus-structured microfibers and array: high-efficiency conjugate electrospinning fabrication, structure analysis and co-instantaneous multifunctionality of anisotropic conduction, magnetism and enhanced red fluorescence

A highly efficient and convenient conjugate electrospinning technique is employed to obtain high pairing rate Janus-structured microfibers in electrospun products by optimizing the spinning conditions. In addition, a Janus-structured microfiber array rendering tri-functional performance of tunable magnetism, electrically anisotropic conduction and increased fluorescence is prepared via the same technique using a rotating device as a fiber collector. The array is composed of an ordered arrangement of Janus-structured microfibers. The extraordinary Janus structure and oriented arrangement endow the Janus-structured microfibers with excellent fluorescence. The fluorescence intensity of the Janus-structured microfiber array is, respectively, 1.21, 14.3 and 20.3 times higher than that of the Janus-structured microfiber non-array, the composite microfiber array and the composite microfiber non-array. The Janus-structured microfiber array has a similar saturation magnetization to the contradistinctive specimens. Additionally, the magnetism of the Janus-structured microfiber array can be modulated with different mass ratios of Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles (NPs), and the conductance ratio between the length direction and diameter direction of the Janus-structured microfibers for the array can be tuned from 10³ to 10⁶ by adding a higher percentage of polyaniline (PANI). Our new findings have established a highly efficient conjugate electrospinning technique to prepare Janus-structured microfibers of high pairing rate, and complete isolation of fluorescent material from magnetic nanoparticles and conductive material is accomplished in the Janus-structured microfibers to ensure high fluorescence intensity without a notably disadvantageous influence of dark-colored substances. More importantly, the fabrication technique for the Janus-structured microfibers can be generalized to manufacture other Janus-structured multifunctional materials.

High pairing rate Janus-structured microfibers and their arrays, rendering simultaneous anisotropic conduction, magnetism and fluorescence, are successfully fabricated via conjugate electrospinning.