Referring back to the electrospinning that took place in week 4, the mats were produced successfully by the use of a Harvard Apparatus Syringe Infusion pump (see figure 1). This machine had a syringe filled with our PEO solution that had a voltage source connected to the needle (see figure 2). The syringe spun the solution onto a sheet of aluminum foil for several hours. There were several small problems that occurred with the machine during this process; the machine kept shutting off every hour or two for unknown reasons. This made it very difficult to get the spinning done efficiently unless someone checked on it periodically throughout the process. After a full mat was finally spun, it was let to sit over night and then peeled free the next day.
Figure 1: Harvard Apparatus Syringe Infusion Pump used for spinning mat
Figure 2: Syringe for apparatus that held PEO solution with voltage source connected to needle
The plan was to analyze the mats under the SEM and determine what changes needed to be made to the parameters in order to make a mat with an even smaller pore size in week 5. However, the SEM was down for the entire week. Luckily it was fixed this week, and it was used today to take pictures of the nanofibrous mat. The images seen through the microscope came out much better than expected. At this time we are still waiting for the pictures to be processed and more exact information about the results obtained from the SEM will be posted as soon as they are available.
No comments:
Post a Comment