Preparation and characterization of electrospun silica nanofibers from PVP/P123 blended polymer solution

Silica nanofibers were prepared by electrospinning method using PVP/P123 blend polymer solutions. Here, a triblock copolymer (Pluronic P123, EO20PO70EO20, M(av) = 5800) was used as the structure directing agent and polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) as the fiber template. The samples were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier Transform Infrared (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), TGA (thermal gravimetric analysis), and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET). It was found that the silica nanofibers synthesized in this work had uniform pore structure with high surface area. An average fiber diameter, average pore diameter, and surface area were about 300 nm, 2.7 nm and 607 m2 g(-1). Adsorption equilibrium data of lysozyme on the synthesized silica nanofibers were correlated well with Langmuir equation.