Study on graphical electro-spinning of PZT nano-fibers

In the past few years, many reports on the application of electro-spinning in the preparation of PZT nano-fibers have been published. However, it is still very difficult to get PZT nano-fibers with the same orientation. To solve this problem, we prepare the collecting plates by MEMS technology and add an auxiliary voltage in our experiment. With these two new methods, we can prepare PZT nano-fibers with the same orientation in a particular area of the collecting plate. In our experiment, a silicon wafer covered by a thin SiO₂ film is used as the substrate. An Au film is sputtered on the substrate. And after a lithography process, we get triangle and square electrodes. Then with an auxiliary voltage the electro-spinning can be done. This method changes the traditional evenly distribution of the electric field into unevenly distribution. The unevenly distributed electric field can control the movement of the nano-fibers and finally we can get the oriented graphical PZT nano-fibers. In this paper, we get the most positive electro-spinning parameters such as the density of electro-spinning solution, the voltage and the distance between the needle and the collector plate by comparing the results of the experiments with different parameters. In our experiment with the most positive parameters, we obtain PZT nano-fibers with the same orientation. In some particular area we even collect single PZT nano-fiber. Our research leads to a new method for the preparation of PZT nano-fibers by the integration of electro-spinning and MEMS technology.