Effects of nanoparticles on the dynamic morphology of electrified jets

¹ Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo CNR - Via dei Taurini 19, 00185 Rome, Italy
² Dipartimento di Matematica e Fisica “Ennio De Giorgi”, Università del Salento - Via Arnesano, 73100 Lecce, Italy
³ NEST, Istituto Nanoscienze-CNR - Piazza S. Silvestro 12, 56127 Pisa, Italy
⁴ Institute for Applied Computational Science, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences - Cambridge, MA 02138, USA

^(a) lauricella.marco@gmail.com (corresponding author)

Received: 18 July 2017
Accepted: 29 September 2017

Abstract

We investigate the effects of nanoparticles on the onset of varicose and whipping instabilities in the dynamics of electrified jets. In particular, we show that the non-linear interplay between the mass of the nanoparticles and electrostatic instabilities, gives rise to qualitative changes of the dynamic morphology of the jet, which in turn, drastically affect the final deposition pattern in electrospinning experiments. It is also shown that even a tiny amount of excess mass, of the order of a few percent, may more than double the radius of the electrospun fiber, with substantial implications for the design of experiments involving electrified jets as well as spun organic fibers.