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Journal of Nanotechnology
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 483976, 7 pages
doi:10.1155/2012/483976
Permeability of Electrospun Superhydrophobic Nanofiber Mats
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Akron, Akron, OH 44325-3906, USA
Received 14 September 2011; Accepted 14 January 2012
Academic Editor: Andrei Kolmakov
Copyright © 2012 Sarfaraz U. Patel et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
This paper discusses the fabrication and characterization of electrospun nanofiber mats made up of poly(4-methyl-1-pentene) polymer. The polymer was electrospun in different weight concentrations. The mats were characterized by their basis weight, fiber diameter distribution, contact angles, contact angle hysteresis, and air permeability. All of the electrospun nonwoven fiber mats had water contact angles greater than 150 degrees making them superhydrophobic. The permeabilities of the mats were empirically fitted to the mat basis weight by a linear relation. The experimentally measured air permeabilities were significantly larger than the permeabilities predicted by the Kuwabara model for fibrous media.