Multi-response analysis in the material characterisation of electrospun poly (lactic acid)/halloysite nanotube composite fibres based on Taguchi design of experiments: fibre diameter, non-intercalation and nucleation effects

Poly (lactic acid) (PLA)/halloysite nanotube (HNT) composite fibres were prepared by using a simple and versatile electrospinning technique. The systematic approach via Taguchi design of experiments (DoE) was implemented to investigate factorial effects of applied voltage, feed rate of solution, collector distance and HNT concentration on the fibre diameter, HNT non-intercalation and nucleation effects. The HNT intercalation level, composite fibre morphology, their associated fibre diameter and thermal properties were evaluated by means of X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), imaging analysis and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), respectively. HNT non-intercalation phenomenon appears to be manifested as reflected by the minimal shift of XRD peaks for all electrospun PLA/HNT composite fibres. The smaller-fibre-diameter characteristic was found to be sequentially associated with the feed rate of solution, collector distance and applied voltage. The glass transition temperature (T g) and melting temperature (T m) are not highly affected by varying the material and electrospinning parameters. However, as the indicator of the nucleation effect, the crystallisation temperature (T c) of PLA/HNT composite fibres is predominantly impacted by HNT concentration and applied voltage. It is evident that HNT’s nucleating agent role is confirmed when embedded with HNTs to accelerate the cold crystallisation of composite fibres. Taguchi DoE method has been found to be an effective approach to statistically optimise critical parameters used in electrospinning in order to effectively tailor the resulting physical features and thermal properties of PLA/HNT composite fibres

Recent Nanofiber Technologies

This article is a perspective that includes a brief introduction to nanofiber production methods, their potential applications, and three review articles in the field of nanofibers. Although the full range of applications that best exploit these new developments are yet to be developed, the emerging innovative applications of nanofibers in biomedical, sensor, electronic, and other areas will likely be enabled or enhanced by these recent advances in several key techniques. Three review articles, distinct but interrelated, discuss technical research and development, and include possible applications for several industries in the polymer nanofiber arena

Linear dilaton black holes

We present new solutions to Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton-axion (EMDA) gravity in four dimensions describing black holes which asymptote to the linear dilaton background. In the non-rotating case they can be obtained as the limiting geometry of dilaton black holes. The rotating solutions (possibly endowed with a NUT parameter) are constructed using a generating technique based on the Sp(4,R) duality of the EMDA system. In a certain limit (with no event horizon present) our rotating solutions coincide with supersymmetric Israel-Wilson-Perjes type dilaton-axion solutions. In presence of an event horizon supersymmetry is broken. The temperature of the static black holes is constant, and their mass does not depend on it, so the heat capacity is zero. We investigate geodesics and wave propagation in these spacetimes and find superradiance in the rotating case. Because of the non-asymptotically flat nature of the geometry, certain modes are reflected from infinity, in particular, all superradiant modes are confined. This leads to classical instability of the rotating solutions. The non-rotating linear dilaton black holes are shown to be stable under spherical perturbations.Comment: 30 pages, 1 eps figure, 8 typos correcte