Unlocking nanofibers’ potential
Nanofibers — polymer filaments only a couple of hundred nanometers in diameter — have a huge range of potential applications, from solar cells to water filtration to fuel cells. But so far, their high cost of manufacture has relegated them to just a few niche industries. In the latest issue of the journal Nanotechnology, MIT researchers describe a new technique for producing nanofibers that increases the rate of production fourfold while reducing energy consumption by more than 90 percent, holding out the prospect of cheap, efficient nanofiber production. “We have demonstrated a systematic way to produce nanofibers through electrospinning that surpasses the state of the art,” says Luis Fernando Velásquez-García, a principal research scientist in MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories, who led the new work. “But the way that it’s done opens a very interesting possibility. Our group and many other groups are working to push 3-D printing further, to make it possible...