Fabrication of Electrospinning Device Using Microcontroller for Formation of Nanofibers

FABRICATION OF ELECTROSPINNING DEVICE USING MICROCONTROLLER FOR FORMATION OF NANOFIBERS Sriram K 1# , Muruganand S 2# , Balakrishnan P 1# . 1 PhD Research scholar, 2 Assistant Professor, # Department of Electronics and Instrumentation, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore -641046, India __________________________________________________________________________________________ AbstractDesign and fabrication of Electrospinning device is done by controlling flow rate of the polymer solution and the high voltage generation using flyback were done and observed with theoretical analysis and considerations. Microcontroller based bipolar stepper motor controlling is used to control the rate of polymer from a syringe and the high voltage of 32kV 5milliamps generated using flyback transformer, is measured and kept constant for the analysis. The switching circuits of MOSFET with snubber protected are used for driving the flyback line output transformer. Whole setup of the syringe is made adjustable vertically for varying the distance between the tip of a needle and the collector from 0mm to 9.2 mm. The polymer solution Poly Vinyl Alcohol (PVA) of 8wt% is used for the formation of the sample and the film is analyzed for the nanostructure. By the analysis, nonaligned PVA polymer nanofiber of various in size from 900 nm and below in size is formed at the flow rate of 4ml/ hour at 7mm distance between jet and the collector. The 5 ml syringe of 0.55mm in diameter and 25mm in length is used. Though the distance between the collector and the jet of the syringe affects the formation of the nanofiber, at and below 5mm distance the PVA pendant drop sputters immediately and the Taylor cone is not even form.