Nanofiber materials are nonwoven materials made of fibers that are 1,000 times thinner than human hair.

Nanofibers offer several advantages, such as high surface-area-to-volume ratios which make them ideal for applications like filtration, sensors, and reinforcement materials. Depending on the polymers used to make them, nanofibers can also have unique biocompatibility and biodegradability properties, which can make them ideal for integration with biological systems, like for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, or for sustainability applications.

Nanofibers are commonly made from polymers, such as:

• Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF)
• Polycaprolactone (PCL)
• Polyacrylonitrile (PAN)
• Thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU)
• Gelatin
• Chitosan (with additives)
• Polyvinyl butyral (PVB)
• Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)
• Nylon (PA6)

Materic manufactures these materials via electrospinning, which is a platform technology that enables scalable and customizable production of nanofibers. Changes to electrospinning parameters can alter the properties of the final nanofiber material. Some standard properties with tunable ranges include:

• Material thickness: 10 μm – 750 μm
• Fiber diameter: 200 nm – 1 μm
• Area density: 1-100 g/m²

Nanofibers can also undergo different types of post-treatment processes following electrospinning, to stabilize the materials or enhance certain properties, such as hydrophobicity.

The SEM (scanning electron microscopy) images below show high-resolution scans of the fiber morphology of as-spun nanofibers (Figure 1) and post-treated nanofibers (Figure 2).

Figure 1: Ceramic nanofibers with diameters of ~100nm–1μm.

Figure 2: Carbon nanofibers after stabilization treatment. Individual fibers have diameters of ~400nm and the nanofiber material has a thickness of ~80μm, an area density of ~15 g/m², and sheet resistance of ~7 Ω/sq