Preparation and Multifunctional Properties of Hydrophobic Electrospun Cellulose Acetate/Polystyrene Nanofibrous...

In this work, cellulose acetate (CA)/polystyrene (PS) composite nanofibrous membranes with various mass ratios (0/1, 1/1, 3/1, 5/1, 11/1, and 23/1) were fabricated via one-step electrospinning. The effects of the CA/PS ratio on fiber morphology, mechanical properties, porosity, wettability, air permeability, and thermal insulation were systematically investigated. Compared with the pure PS nanofibrous membranes, the CA/PS (3/1) membrane shows substantially enhanced structural and functional properties: porosity increases from 27.38% to 53.27%, air permeability from 56.45 ± 3.71 mm/s to 104.51 ± 2.89 mm/s, and water contact angle (WCA) from 124.79 ± 3.21° to 132.09 ± 0.86°. Its tensile strength (5.38 ± 0.47 MPa) and elongation at break (47.12 ± 3.28%) are approximately 3.6 and 6.1 times those of the pure PS membrane (1.50 ± 0.27 MPa and 7.67 ± 1.61%). These prominent multifunctional characteristics enable the CA/PS composite nanofibrous membranes to serve as promising candidates for personal protection, filtration and separation, and thermal management applications, although application-specific performance and long-term durability still require further investigations.