Nanofibers: Emerging Progress on Fabrication Using Mechanical Force and Recent Applications

Abstract

Nanofibers have attracted extensive interest over the few decades due to their unique physicochemical properties. Tremendous efforts have been made to explore their applications, and many articles have been published in the literature to date. These studies of nanofibers have focused on two main issues, that is, how to make nanofibers and how they can be used. This review summarizes the current status of nanofiber fabrication and applications of nanofibers. In the fabrication area, we focused on recently developed methods for fabricating nanofibers, which is based on mechanical force. This approach has accelerated the development of new types of nanofibers, and it has made commercial opportunities available for the hundreds of ideas that have been developed in academic fields. This review also presents information concerning the current applications and potential applications of nanofibers in medical engineering, the generation of energy, and the remediation of areas affected by environmental pollution. We have introduced the concept and technology for achieving target applications of nanofibers in the various fields, and this is followed by discussing several highlighted works. We believe that this review could help advance the progress in the development of strategies for the synthesis of nanofibers and broaden their academic and commercial applications.

Keywords:

• nanofiber
• recent applications
• mechanical force

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Division of Frontier Fibers, Institute for Fiber Engineering (IFES), Interdisciplinary Cluster for Cutting Edge Research (ICCER) at Shinshu University.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no competing interests.