Team:UCLA/Notebook/Materials/13 May 2015

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• 20% w/v dope extruded into 70% ethanol succeeded
  • nominal extrusion rate of 16 uL/min
  • I say nominal because the screw drive clearly isn’t advancing
    • I see now why professional fiber spinners use piston pressure instead of a drive screw syringe pump
  • I had to pull the coagulating mass out of the way of the dope that was continuing to advance out of the PEEK tubing
    • hence, at some points the fiber is thinner (but still intact)
    • nevertheless, even without pulling on the dope, a fiber would still form right out of the tubing
  • Some confounding variables:
    • I have no idea what pressure the pump is applying to the syringe since the drive block is not moving at all
    • Time may be a variable: this had been pumping for a long time before this particular experiment. Maybe all of the air bubbles from yesterday have already been purged?
  • Things to take care of next:
    • construct a robust set up where dope coming out of the tube will have adequate space so that it doesn’t hinder the dope coming out of the peek tubing
    • try it on silk!
    • construct a post-spin stretch system. This will alleviate the problem of coagulated dope interfering with dope that’s still coming out
      • additionally, we’ll need to have this set up anyway for silk
• Once again, tried 20% w/v dope extruded into 70% ethanol, this time with the syringe pump oriented vertically
  • gravity pulled already forming fibers out of the way, allowing fibers to continue to form.