Date of Award
2007
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Engineering Science
Program
Biomedical Engineering
Supervisor
Dr. Wankei Wan
Second Advisor
Dr. Xueliang A Sun
Abstract
Electrospinning is an effective method to fabricate polymer nanofibers, which have high surface area to volume ratio and availability for surface functionalization. The exceptionally high stiffness and aspect ratio of carbon nanotubes have also attracted much interest in exploiting them as a reinforcement material. Uniform polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) nanofibers reinforced with multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNT) was prepared by electrospinning and the mechanical properties of individual electrospun fibers were investigated using atomic force microscopy (AFM). Sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) was added to MWNTs to aid dispersion and improve interfacial bonding. Results show that the addition of 0.58wt% SDS to PVA fibers did not have any effect on the elastic modulus. Raman spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) data have shown that MWNTs were successfully composited with PVA. No significant improvement was made by the composite fibers containing 2.12wt% MWNT compared to the pure PVA fibers possibly due to poor carbon nanotube dispersion. Elastic modulus data from PVA and PVA-SDS-MWNT fibers showed diameter dependency. After empirical curve fitting, a single-term exponential decay equation showed best fit to experimental data
Recommended Citation
Chan, Winnie W.Y., "ELECTROSPUN CARBON NANOTUBE REINFORCED POLYVINYL ALCOHOL NANOFIBERS" (2007). Digitized Theses. 5070.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/digitizedtheses/5070
