Preparation of Janus microfibers with magnetic and fluorescence functionality via conjugate electro-spinning

Abstract

In order to achieve high-yielding rate of Janus microfibers in electrospun product, conjugate electrospinning is employed via optimization of electrospinning conditions. Further, Janus microfibers array affording dual-functional performance of magnetism and fluorescence is fabricated by above technique. The unique structure has the advantage of realizing complete separation of fluorescent materials from magnetic nanoparticles, which can ensure high fluorescent intensity without remarkably adverse effect of magnetic substance. The diameter of the fibers in the array is 11.72 ± 0.09 μm. The emission peaks of Tb3+ are found and assigned to the transitions of 5D4 → 7F6 (490 nm), 5D4 → 7F5 (545 nm), 5D4 → 7F4 (581 nm) and 5D4 → 7F3 (620 nm). Compared with the counterpart contrastive samples, Janus microfibers array present higher comprehensive performance owing to the exceptional structure and directionally ordered arrangement. Moreover, the saturation magnetization can be tailored from 3.6 emu·g−1 to 24.0 emu·g−1 via adding various amounts of Fe3O4 NPs. This work provides an effective method to fabricate other advanced multifunctional materials. Keywords: Janus microfibers array, Magnetism, Fluorescence, Conjugate electro-spinning, Multifunctional materials