Abstract/Summary

The PhD project aims to create an electrospun fibre composite using an inorganic salt and various candidate polymers, as well as to explore the production of conducting electrospun fibres. This involves electrospinning copper salt with different polymers or solvents to determine the mineral content retained by the fibres. The project also focused on electrospinning Cu(I) salt nanofibers under specific solvation conditions. In the second part of this project, the focus was on developing conductive electrospun materials. This section explored three main approaches: two-stage production of polypyrrole-coated polystyrene electrospun using a chemical vapour oxidation process, one-step electrospinning of polypyrrole-polystyrene electrospun fibres via slow, in situ polypyrrole polymerisation, and electrospun polypyrrole grafted to polystyrene nanofibers. Additionally, the thesis delves into coaxial electrospinning within this part of the project. Several qualitative and quantitative analysis techniques were used in this project, including SEM and SEM-EDX, IR, NMR, and XRD instrumentation. The findings indicated that polar polymers have a higher capacity to retain soluble copper salt after electrospinning when compared to non-polar polymers. Additionally, certain modifications were found to improve the ability of non-polar polymers, such as polystyrene, to maintain copper components. Furthermore, employing electrospinning under critical solvation conditions proved a novel and successful approach for producing semiconducting copper-polystyrene nanofibers across a wide range of polymer and copper concentrations at variable applied voltage. The results revealed that the one-step process of producing polypyrrole-polystyrene and grafted polystyrene-polypyrrole nanofibers showed particular promise regarding morphology and polypyrrole coverage with polypyrrole. The coaxial electrospinning results partially succeeded in producing coaxial nanofibres but could not be developed into nanotubes.