Unwinding Spooled Electrospun Nanofibers

National Institute for Nano-Engineering (NINE) Engineering, 2009-10

Liaison(s): Dr. Tim Boyle, Sarah Hoppe
Advisor(s): Nancy Lape
Students(s): Doo Hyun Chung (S), Mike McNeece, Nadia M’Tarrah, David Rolfe (F), Michelle Walker (TL-F), Alex Young (TL-S)

Nanofibers, fibers 100 to 1,000 times narrower than a human hair, have a wide range of technological applications because of their outstanding surface area to mass ratio. Applications include medical filtration and advanced lithium-ion batteries. An infrastructure does not yet exist for the storage and transport of nanofibers for use at secondary processing facilities. To this end, we designed, built, and tested a system to store nanofibers on a spool and unwind them for reuse later.