ABSTRACT
Nanobers are the ultrane solid bers of very small diameters-preferably lower than 100 nm (Frenot and Chronakis, 2003), although bers of hundreds of nanometers in diameter are also included among the nanobers. Traditional polymer bers made by spinning using pressure-driven £ow through an extruder have diameters in the order of 10-100 μm(McKee et al., 2004). By shrinkingthe ber diameter from micrometers to submicron or nanometer region, new amazing properties appear (Huang et al., 2003). Nanobers have a large surface area per unit mass and very small pore size. Thus, 1gof polymeric nanobers of 50 nm diameter has an area about 100 m2 (Vrieze et al., 2007). The surface area-to-volume ratio for ananober can be up to 1000 times higher than that of amicrober (Huang et al., 2003). Surface functionality of nanobers can be controlled and tailored £exibly, and they possess superior mechanical performance like stiffness and tensile strength.
