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Three-dimensional imaging of electrospun fiber mats using confocal laser scanning microscopy and digital image analysis

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Abstract

Confocal laser scanning microscopy with fluorescent markers and index matching has been used to collect three-dimensional (3D) digitized images of electrospun fiber mats and of a borosilicate glass fiber material. By embedding the fluorescent dye in either the material component (fibers) or pore space component (the index-matching fluid), acquisitions of both positive and negative images of the porous fibrous materials are demonstrated. Image analysis techniques are then applied to the 3D reconstructions of the fibrous materials to extract important morphological characteristics such as porosity, specific surface area, distributions of fiber diameter and of pore diameter, and fiber orientation distribution; the results are compared with other experimental measurements where available. The topology of the pore space is quantified for an electrospun mat for the first time using the Euler-Poincaré characteristic. Finally, a method is presented for subdividing the pore space into a network of cavities and the gates that interconnect them, by which the network structure of the pore space in these electrospun mats is determined.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to EMD Millipore Corporation for financial support of this work. We also wish to thank Dimitrios Tzeranis for the use of his MatLab code to determine fiber orientation distribution from SEM images, and Wendy Salmon for assistance in the use of CLSM.

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Author notes

  1. Peng Yi

    Present address: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, 21218, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA

    Looh Tchuin Choong, Peng Yi & Gregory C. Rutledge

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  1. Looh Tchuin Choong
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  2. Peng Yi
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  3. Gregory C. Rutledge
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gregory C. Rutledge.

Additional information

Looh Tchuin (Simon) Choong and Peng Yi authors contributed equally to this work.

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Choong, L.T., Yi, P. & Rutledge, G.C. Three-dimensional imaging of electrospun fiber mats using confocal laser scanning microscopy and digital image analysis. J Mater Sci 50, 3014–3030 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-015-8834-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-015-8834-2

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