Ph.D. student Dongwoon (Danny) Shin, advised by mechanical engineering assistant professor Jiyoung Chang and a member of Wearable NEMS Laboratory, won the best poster award at the 6th international conference on electrospinning (Electrospin 2019) held June 19-21, in Shanghai, China. Of over 150 posters presented, the best poster awardees were carefully selected after a rigorous evaluation process by the award committee.
The electrospin conference is the world’s largest conference on electrospinning technology, bringing over 400 participants from more than 22 countries. Shin’s poster is entitled: “High-resolution nanofiber patterning using droplet-jet mode near-field electrospinning”
Although much effort and investment are being made on improving the productivity of mass-production of electrospinning, researches on implementing individual fibers for micro/nanomanufacturing is still in its infancy due to the lack of experimental and theoretical background on the lower regime of electrospinning. Shin’s research is exploring the lower regime, including the lower boundary of the electrohydrodynamic phenomenon, of electrospinning to enable precise patterning of functional nanofibers. Enabling such control requires a complicated experimental setup, including precision xyz stage, high-voltage power source, and vision system, all of which should work in harmony and in real-time. Shin’s work has demonstrated that droplet-jet mode electrospinning (DJ-NFES) scheme can enable patterning of nanofibers down to a few micrometers resolution for the first time.