DIY Electrospinning Nanofiber Mats

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DIY Electrospinning Nanofiber Mats

ISEF Category: Biomedical Engineering

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Subcategory: Biomaterials and Regenerative Medicine  ·  Difficulty: Advanced  ·  Setup: Home Setup  ·  Time: 1 to 2 Months

The Hook

Commercial electrospinning machines cost more than a car. The high-voltage core of one lives inside a 30 dollar negative-ion air purifier. With a syringe pump and a grounded plate, you can spin nanofiber mats thinner than a human hair. Cells grown on those mats line up in the direction the fibers do, which matters for skin, tendon, and nerve repair.

What Is It?

Electrospinning uses a high-voltage field to pull a polymer solution into a thin jet. The jet whips back and forth, the solvent evaporates, and a mat of solid fibers lands on a grounded collector. Fiber diameter depends on voltage, flow rate, and polymer concentration.

PCL (polycaprolactone) is a biodegradable polyester used in sutures. Gelatin gives the fibers cell-friendly chemistry. Blended together they make a scaffold close to native skin matrix.

A published cell-orientation model predicts how fibroblasts align with fiber direction based on fiber spacing and diameter. You can feed your measured fiber distributions into the model and predict alignment without growing cells.

Why This Is a Good Topic

Electrospun scaffolds are used in real wound dressings, vascular grafts, and nerve guides. Building a rig from a teardown teaches you high-voltage safety, fluid mechanics, and image analysis. The predicted cell-alignment angle is a quantitative output you can compare to literature.

Research Questions

  • How does voltage change measured fiber diameter at fixed flow rate?
  • What is the effect of PCL-to-gelatin ratio on fiber-diameter distribution?
  • Does the published cell-orientation model match alignment trends seen in literature images?
  • To what extent does collector distance influence mat porosity?
  • Which fiber-diameter band best matches published optimal fibroblast alignment?
  • How does humidity shift the diameter distribution?
  • What is the effect of solvent choice on bead-free fiber formation?

Basic Materials

  • Negative-ion air purifier teardown (12 kV supply).
  • Insulated workspace and high-voltage safety gloves.
  • Syringe and stepper-motor syringe pump.
  • Aluminum-foil grounded collector.
  • PCL pellets (online craft or maker supplier).
  • Gelatin packets.
  • Acetic acid and formic acid (used with ventilation).
  • Smartphone with clip-on microscope.

Advanced Materials

  • Lab-grade PCL of known molecular weight.
  • Hexafluoroisopropanol solvent (advanced supervision).
  • Scanning electron microscope access.
  • Calibrated high-voltage probe.
  • Rotating drum collector.

Software & Tools

  • ImageJ (DiameterJ plugin): Measures fiber diameter distributions automatically.
  • Python (NumPy and SciPy): Fits diameter histograms and computes statistics.
  • OrientationJ plugin: Computes fiber alignment angles.
  • DrawIO or Fritzing: Documents the high-voltage circuit safely.

Experiment Steps

  1. Build the high-voltage rig with double insulation and a dedicated kill switch before adding polymer.
  2. Decide whether voltage, flow rate, or composition is your first sweep variable and lock the others.
  3. Calibrate your smartphone microscope against a known-scale slide so diameter readings have real units.
  4. Plan controls (pure PCL, pure gelatin) that bracket your blends.
  5. Choose how many images per mat you will analyze so your distribution statistics are stable.
  6. Compare your predicted alignment angles to published fibroblast alignment data.

Common Pitfalls

  • Touching the high-voltage lead because the rig looks calm between jets.
  • Reporting only a mean fiber diameter and hiding a bimodal distribution.
  • Spinning in changing humidity, which shifts diameter without you knowing.
  • Calibrating the microscope once and trusting it across many sessions.
  • Confusing beads on string with true fibers when measuring.

What Makes This Competitive

A competitive project documents high-voltage safety, reports a full diameter histogram with confidence intervals, and compares the published cell-orientation model against measured alignment from publicly available scaffold images. Including a Pareto plot of fiber diameter versus mat porosity raises the engineering bar.

Project Variations

  • Replace PCL with PLA pellets and compare fiber morphology.
  • Spin onto a rotating drum to make aligned mats and quantify the alignment gain.
  • Coat mats with polydopamine and compare yeast adhesion across coatings.

Learn More

  • PubMed: Search electrospinning fibroblast alignment review.
  • NIH PubMed Central: Open-access papers on PCL gelatin blends.
  • MIT OpenCourseWare: Course 3.063 Polymer Physics covers spinning fundamentals.
  • DiameterJ documentation: ImageJ plugin guide hosted on the ImageJ wiki.
  • NIOSH publications: High-voltage safety standards for student labs.

For next steps tailored to your interests, skill level, and timeline, work one-on-one with a MehtA+ mentor. Learn more about MehtA+ Science & Engineering Research Mentorship →

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