Comparison of different electrospinning technologies for the production of arrays with multifunctional properties: fluorescence, conduction and magnetism

In order to efficiently select a specific electrospinning technology to construct multifunctional nanomaterials according to their actual demands, herein, we utilize the same spinning dopes to construct fluorescent-conductive-magnetic trifunctional array. This is a case study to compare the advantages and disadvantages of four electrospinning technologies including conjugate electrospinning (CJE), parallel electrospinning (PE), coaxial electrospinning (CAE) and traditional electrospinning (TE) technologies, and further systematically investigate the differences in structure and properties of the electrospun products. The results indicate that CAE technology is more suitable to prepare multifunctional materials with fluorescent property, and PE technology is more beneficial for the fabrication of Janus-structured multifunctional materials with conductive anisotropy. Janus-structured materials can be constructed by PE and CJE technologies, but CJE technology is a better choice to prepare high pairing-rate Janus structure. TE technology is more suitable for fabricating ordinary nanobelt or nanofiber owing to its easy operation and simple equipment. CAE, PE and CJE technologies are used to construct 1D nanostructures with two functional partitions, and these partitioned nanostructures can help to reduce adverse influences among various starting materials to obtain better multifunctionalities. The research results have important guiding significance for researchers to fabricate multifunctional nanomaterials via selecting a specific electrospinning technology. Highlights Four electrospinning techniques are comparatively studied using the same spinning dopes. Merits and demerits of the four electrospinning techniques are exhibited in detail. Differences in structure and properties of the electrospun products are compared. Electrospun product has fluorescent-anisotropic conductive-magnetic trifunctionality. Result can guide the selection of specific electrospinning towards multifunctional material.