Dynamic Stabilization of Electro-Spinning Process for Production of Inflatable Drug-Delivery Stents

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Electrospinning, first discovered in the late 1930s, is a versatile method to create ultra-fine fibers from polymer solutions with diameters ranging from a few nanometers to several micrometers. Currently, electrospinning is the only method for the fabrication of continuous fibers at the nanometer scale. One of the main application areas of electrospinning is tissue engineering, where electro-spun nano-fibers are used to produce tissue and organ templates. Despite its ability to produce very fine fibers, the electrospinning process as a manufacturing technique is poorly controlled. The very same forces responsible for drawing the fibers are also at play in generating an undesirable instability, leading to random fiber distribution and poor control over the location of the produced fibers. This award supports fundamental research to provide knowledge required for the development of a controlled nano-fiber deposition process. This project's dynamic stabilization approach will enable the manufacturing of woven polymeric stents that can be used in tissue engineering and in the production of new biodegradable drug-delivery stents. Therefore, results from this research will benefit the U.S. economy, and will lead to the development of advanced therapeutic devices. This research contains an outreach program using an analog of the approach aimed at motivating children from disadvantaged communities and underrepresented minorities to pursue STEM careers.More specifically, this research will explore dynamic stabilization and electrostatic focusing as a new means to control the deposition of electrospun fibers. For the first time, it will examine the feasibility of focusing charged filaments inside a Paul-type linear ionic trap. Despite their widespread use in mass spectroscopy, linear ionic traps have never been used to trap macroscopic ions such as electrospun polymeric fibers. Using Floquet analysis, the research will examine theoretically the feasibility of trapping charged fibers and will establish the required trapping parameters. A closed-loop control of the electrospinning process based on the dynamic stabilization is also planned.