Electrospinning is a low-cost and versatile method to make non-woven polymeric textiles and fabrics, but there is a need for low-cost and simple methods to modify the surfaces of the fibers. Current methods rely on additional processing and treatment steps. Herein, we report a study to show a one-step and fast method to fabricate surface-modified electrospun polymer fibers using bottlebrush polymer additives. In prior work, we have shown that blends of bottlebrush polymers spontaneously segregate to surfaces when blended with linear polymers, but the segregation is highly processing-dependent. To understand whether bottlebrush additives would segregate to the surfaces of electrospun fibers, we studied the model blends of bottlebrush deuterated polystyrene (BBdPS) and linear polystyrene (PS). We used scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to characterize the width and shape of the fibers and time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectroscopy (ToF-SIMS) to quantify the vertical stratification of the blends after electrospinning the fiber. These measurements confirmed the strong segregation of the bottlebrush additives to the fiber surfaces under varying fiber dimensions and processing conditions. We also present studies of hydrophilic bottlebrush additives, which produce fibers with hydrophilic surface properties due to the segregation of the bottlebrush additives. This work presents a new method to modify the surfaces of electrospun fibers and insight into the relationship between processing and segregation of bottlebrushes to the fiber surface.

Surface-modified electrospun fibers using bottlebrush polymer additives

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