The technique of Electrospinning is an age old technique. Unlike typical fibre spinning methods yielding fibres with diameters in the micrometer range, electrospinning process could be utilized to make polymer fibers with diameter lower than 100 nm (nanofiber). This is done using an electrostatically driven jet of polymer solution. Significant progress has been made in this area throughout the past decade. However, most of the current work on electrospinning technique has been either on trying to control nanofibre morphology, structure, surface functionality, and strategies for assembling them or on establishing right conditions for electrospinning of various polymers and biopolymers.
Researchers from Phillipps-Universitat Marburg, Germany touted that this new green electrospinning approach avoids the use of harmful organic solvents, instead takes advantage of aqueous suspensions of biodegradable block copolymers. The result is PHA-b-PEO nanofibers. Basically, opening up a new approach to making nanofibers those could be used for applications in medicine, pharmacy and agriculture.
[Reference: J. Sun, K. Bubel, F. Chen, T. Kissel, S. Agarwal, A. Greiner; Macromolecular Rapid Communications, 31 (23), pp. 2077-2083(2010)]
