Abstract

A significant challenge inThis paper outlines the story of the inventions and
discoveries that directly relate to the genesis and development of electrostatic production and drawing
of fibres: electrospinning. Current interest in the process is due to the ease with which nano-scale
fibers can be produced in the laboratory. In 1600, the first record of the electrostatic attraction
of a liquid was observed by William Gilbert. Christian Friedrich Schönbein produced highly
nitrated cellulose in 1846. In 1887 Charles Vernon Boys described the process in a paper on nano-fiber
manufacture. John Francis Cooley filed the first electrospinning patent in 1900. In 1914 John Zeleny
published work on the behaviour of fluid droplets at the end of metal capillaries. His effort began the
attempt to mathematically model the behavior of fluids under electrostatic forces. Between 1931 and
1944 Anton Formhals took out at least 22 patents on electrospinning. In 1938, N.D. Rozenblum and I.V.
Petryanov-Sokolov generated electrospun fibers, which they developed into filter materials. Between
1964 and 1969 Sir Geoffrey Ingram Taylor produced the beginnings of a theoretical underpinning of
electrospinning by mathematically modelling the shape of the (Taylor) cone formed by the fluid
droplet under the effect of an electric field. In the early 1990s several research groups (notably that of
Reneker who popularised the name electrospinning) demonstrated electrospun nano-fibers. Since 1995,
the number of publications about electrospinning has been increasing exponentially every year.