Drop impacts on electrospun nanofiber membranes

This work reports a study of drop impacts of polar and non-polar liquids onto electrospun nanofiber membranes (of 8--10 mm thickness and pore sizes of 3--6 nm) with an increasing degree of hydrophobicity. The nanofibers used were electrospun from polyacrylonitrile (PAN), nylon 6/6, polycaprolactone (PCL) and Teflon. It was found that for any liquid/fiber pair there exists a threshold impact velocity (1.5 to 3 m/s) above which water penetrates membranes irrespective of their wettability. The low surface tension liquid left the rear side of sufficiently thin membranes as a millipede-like system of tiny jets protruding through a number of pores. For such a high surface tension liquid as water, jets immediately merged into a single bigger jet, which formed secondary drops due to capillary instability. An especially non-trivial result is that superhydrophobicity of the porous nano-textured Teflon skeleton with the interconnected pores is incapable of preventing water penetration due to drop impact, even at relatively low impact velocities close to 3.46 m/s. A theoretical estimate of the critical membrane thickness sufficient for complete viscous dissipation of the kinetic energy of penetrating liquid corroborates with the experimental data.