Assessing the increase in specific surface area for electrospun fibrous network due to pore induction

The effect of pore induction on increasing electrospun fibrous network specific surface area was investigated in this study. Theoretical models based on the available surface area of the fibrous network and exclusion of the surface area lost due to fibre-to-fibre contacts, were developed. The models for calculation of the excluded area are based on Hertzian, Derjaguin-Muller-Toporov (DMT) and Johnson-Kendall-Roberts (JKR) contact models. Overall, the theoretical models correlated the network specific surface area to the material properties including density, surface tension, Young’s modulus, Poisson’s ratio as well as network physical properties such as density and geometrical characteristics including fibre radius, fibre aspect ratio and network thickness. Pore induction proved to increase the network specific surface area up to 52%, compared to the maximum surface area that could be achieved by non-porous fibre network with the same physical properties and geometrical characteristics. The model based on Johnson-Kendall-Roberts contact model describes accurately the fibre-to-fibre contact area under the experimental conditions used for pore generation. The experimental results and the theoretical model based on Johnson-Kendall-Roberts contact model show that the increase in network surface area due to pore induction can reach to up to 58%.