Magnetic electrospun fluorescent polyvinylpyrrolidone nanocomposite fibers

• Published in: Polymer (Guilford) Vol. 53; no. 20; pp. 4501 - 4511
• Main Authors: Chen, Minjiao, Qu, Honglin, Zhu, Jiahua, Luo, Zhiping, Khasanov, Airat, Kucknoor, Ashwini S., Haldolaarachchige, Neel, Young, David P., Wei, Suying, Guo, Zhanhu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 12.09.2012; Elsevier
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Composites; Exact sciences and technology; Fluorescent; Forms of application and semi-finished materials; Magnetic property; Nanocomposite fibers; Polymer industry, paints, wood; Technology of polymers; Magnetic property; Fluorescent; Nanocomposite fibers; Thermal decomposition; Synthetic fiber; Electrospinning; Magnetic hysteresis; Iron; Experimental study; Silica; Structure processing relationship; Magnetization curve; Iron Carbonyl Complexes; Magnetic particles; Pyrrolidone(vinyl) polymer; Morphology; Coated particle; Nanocomposite; Manufacturing; Spherical particle; Magnetic properties
• ISSN: 0032-3861; 1873-2291
• DOI: 10.1016/j.polymer.2012.07.046

Magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) were synthesized from facile thermodecomposition of iron pentacarbonyl and the subsequent silica coating on the MNP surface was achieved via a modified Stöber process to obtain the core–shell composite structured particles (MNPs-SiO2). MNPs-SiO2 were then incorporated into polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) to form nanocomposite fibers via an electrospinning process with optimized operational parameters such as polymer concentration, applied electrical voltage, feed rate and tip-to-collector distance. All these parameters show an unusual effect on the produced fiber diameter. Contrary to the conventional observation, i.e., increasing the applied voltage and feed rate or decreasing the distance could increase the fiber diameter; a reduced average fiber diameter was observed in this study and could be explained from the stretching and contraction force balance within the fiber during electrospinning. The size of the resulting PVP fibers is correlated to the corresponding rheological behaviors of the PVP solutions with different concentrations. The MNPs-SiO2/PVP nanocomposite fibers exhibit a similar thermal decomposition temperature (386.3 °C) as that (387.8 °C) of pure PVP. Meanwhile, unique fluorescent and magnetic properties have been incorporated simultaneously in the nanocomposite fibers with the addition of small amount of MNPs-SiO2 nanoparticles. [Display omitted]