Research Article

Additive Manufacturing Enabled by Electrospinning for Tougher Bio-Inspired Materials

Figure 1

Methodology, design, and SEM images of one layer of 3D Helicoidal Structure. (a) Schematics of near-field melt electrospinning (NFES)—the process used to first lay down patterns of electrospun fibres on top a collector; (b) illustration of a top view of the hierarchical helicoidal design of the basic building blocks found in shells of mantis shrimp dactyl club, as reported in the literature; (c) scanning electron microscope (SEM) image of a layer of highly aligned, dense fibre-structured samples of melt electrospinning fibres with diameters around 10 µm at 65x magnification.
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