Study of Relationships Between Morphology of Polyvinylbutyral Nanofibers and Solvents Properties Using a Predictive Numerical Model

Nanofiber membranes can be used for many applications, however, their morphology dramatically influences properties of final products. Moreover producing nanofibers with desired morphology is extremely complicated since even a small change in any of used solvents will result in a different morphology. Engineering of the morphology is nowadays mostly driven by either (i) personal experience of researcher or (ii) trial and error approaches. The paper presents a complex predictive model allowing controlled nanofiber morphology of polyvinylbutyral that overcomes previous works by considering the most important solvent properties such as permittivity, vapor pressure together with the polymer solubility parameter. The proposed predictive model is able to rank solvents or solvent mixtures allowing direct comparison and selection of more or less appropriate solvents for electrospinning of polyvinylbutyral with respect to desired morphology of nanofibers. The predictive model was experimentally verified by electrospinning of polyvinylbutyral dissolved in eight solvents and their mixtures.