Electrospinning spinneret: A bridge between the visible world and the invisible nanostructures

Bionic design of the electrospinning spinneret

Fabricating novel structures allows for the development of innovative technologies in nanoscience. The methods to fabricate nanomaterials can be categorized based on the key elements determining the final structures of the materials. Electrospinning exhibits unparalleled advantages in the fabrication of nanofiber-based structures by benefitting from the effective interactions between the electrostatic energy and working fluids on a spinneret. As a convergence point of fluids and energy, the structure of the spinneret nozzle plays an important role in the working process and the resulting quality of the fibrous structures.1 The appropriate design and application of the multiple-channel spinneret can provide effective strategies to duplicate complicated structures in the visible world to the “invisible” nanoscale, which can stimulate new types of bionic approaches and promote the development of nanomaterials and nanodevices with even smaller (picotechnology), more orderly (array), and more complex structures compared with those of the existing materials.