Fluorescent electrospun polyvinyl nanocomposite fibers with cadmium selenide(at)zinc sulfide quantum dots

A facile method to fabricate Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) nanofibers decorated with the quantum dots (QDs) nanoparticles is developed in this work. PVA nanocomposites filled with different loading levels of QDs were prepared by the electrospinning process where the photoluminescence from semiconductor quantum dots embedded in a fiber acts as an internal light source. Improved methods of controlling fiber diameter will have broad applications ranging from filtration to cell and tissue engineering. The average diameters of 10 wt% PVA--1 wt% QDs fibers are 226 nm. The differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) curves of powder PVA and PVA/QDs nanofibers demonstrate a relatively large and sharp endothermic curve. As the content of QDs increased, the endothermic peak of PVA became broader, and its peak shifted to lower temperature. The nanocomposite fibers were further characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The rheological behavior of the solutions was also examined.