Single-Component Synthetic Polymer Nanofibers

Herein, we divide the synthetic polymers into several species. Among them, organic solvent-soluble polymers have been greatly developed, for example, electrospun polystyrene (PS) nanofibers have been prepared from different solvent systems (Fig. 3.5A). DMF, tetrahydrofuran, and their mixtures are the most commonly used solvents (Lin et al., 2010; Nitanan et al., 2012). Electrospinning of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) nanofibers also employs DMF as solvent (Fig. 3.5B), and they are a kind of excellent precursor for the fabrication of carbon nanofibers, which have been widely studied (Fen nessey and Farris, 2004; Gu et al., 2005). Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) is another familiar synthetic polymer; electrospun PMMA nanofibers as well as blended fibers have been developed for more than 10 years (Fig. 3.5C) (Ji et al., 2008; Carrizales et al., 2008).