A unique Gas Jet Fiber (GJF) spinning technique that has been developed recently in our laboratory shows an efficient but simple, ease in operation, scalable and cost effective way to produce submicron / nano fibers with tailored morphology using various polymer solutions at room temperature. The novel GJF spinning technique has been further employed in conjugation with conventional precursor chemistry to fabricate semiconducting metal oxide nanofibers at a scalable range. In a typical procedure, inorganic metal salts Indium tri chloride (InCl3, 5H2O), and Tin tetra chloride (SnCl4, 4H2O) have been mixed with a high molecular weight polymer Polyvinyl Pyrollidone (PVP) in a mixed solvents (DMF/EtOH) at room temperature to prepare a spinnable sol for GJF process that can fabricate composite polymeric fibers of ITO-PVP. The composite fibers of PVP/InCl3/SnCl4 (ITO-PVP) has been subjected to controlled thermal treatment to generate Tin doped Indium Oxide (ITO) nanofibers having diameter range of ~150-700 nm with tunable morphology comprising of solid cylindrical or porous surface to hollow tubular structures based on the sol-gel chemistry, GJF processing parameters, precursor loading and calcinations conditions. Our process has also demonstrated the fabrication of other inorganic oxides nanofibers such as Titania (TiO2), Zinc oxide (ZnO) to show the versatility, compatibility and inherent advantages of this spinning process. GJF derived composite ITO-PVP fibers, calcined ITO and other ceramic oxides nanofibers have been characterized by means of TGA for thermal stability, SEM for surface topography, TEM for crystallites morphology and grain size, XRD for degree of crystallinity, nature and sizes of crystallites, and EDX for analyzing elemental composition.

? Fabrication and morphological evaluation of ceramic nanofibers from novel gas-jet fiber spinning

247th National Meeting (2014)

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