Electrospinning behavior of needleless spinneret with a popular mace shape

In this study, a popular mace-shaped (cylinder with thorn arrays on the curved surface) spinneret is used for electrospinning of nanofibers. Compared with the cylinder with a smooth surface, the popular mace spinneret shows markedly improved nanofiber productivity and reduced threshold voltage to initiate the needleless electrospinning. A three-dimensional (3D) finite element method is employed to analyze the electric field profile and electric field intensity around the spinnerets. The electric field intensity on the thorns is much stronger than other parts of the spinneret, and more uniform electric field profile is distributed along the length of mace spinneret. Mace-shaped spinneret may form an effective needleless spinneret for large-scale production of nanofibers.