Electrospinning Thinner Nanofibers Using Lasers

Thinner nanofibers can produce denser meshes and have numerous uses in biological and medical applications. We propose a novel improvement to the electrospinning process, a popular method to produce nanoscale fibers. Our setup consists of three laser diodes, which help focus the polymer jet, and results in almost 20 percent thinner fibers with increased fiber density. In our experiments, we show results for polyethylene oxide, which is a biocompatible and non-immunogenic polymer. However, our proposed method can easily be adapted to other synthetic and bio-polymers.