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EditorialFunctional Nanofibers: Production and Applications

Zeeshan Khatri,1 Ick-Soo Kim,2 and Seong Hun Kim3

1Nanomaterials Research Lab, Department of Textile Engineering, Mehran University of Engineering and Technology,Jamshoro 76062, Pakistan2Nano Fusion Technology Research Group, Interdisciplinary Cluster for Cutting Edge Research (ICCER),Shinshu University, Ueda, Nagano 386-8567, Japan3Department of Organic and Nano Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul 133-791, Republic of Korea

Correspondence should be addressed to Zeeshan Khatri; [email protected]

Received 6 December 2016; Accepted 13 December 2016

Copyright © 2016 Zeeshan Khatri et al.This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Nanofibers are lighter material with higher surface areain comparison to polymeric film. The ease of producingfunctional nanofiber is another advantage over many nano-materials. Functional nanofiber in particular has attained agreater interest in recent years.The applications of functionalnanofibers are increasing in various technical fields such aswater filter membranes, tissue engineering, biosensors, drugdelivery systems, wound dressings, catalysis, antibacterial.This special issue is comprised of well-selective articles thatdiscuss production of functional nanofibers their applicationsin different emerging fields.

M. Zhang et al. have presented exciting work on drugdelivery using nanofibers. They used collagen that wasextracted from abandoned Rana chensinensis skin in north-eastern China via an acid enzymatic extractionmethod.Theydemonstrated two different nanofiber-vancomycin (VCM)systems, that is, VCM blended nanofibers and core-shellnanofibers with VCM in the core, and both systems sustainedcontrol release for a period of 80 hours. Another workwas presented by R. Takai et al. on blood purificationusing composite nanofibers. About 10% of the populationworldwide is affected by chronic kidney disease (CKD). Theauthors developed nanofiber meshes zeolite-polymer com-posite nanofibers for efficient adsorption of creatinine, whichis a simpler and more accessible method for hemodialysis(HD) patients.

The authors from Brazil M. Martelli-Tosi et al. tookthe advantage of abounded raw material soya bean andproduced cellulose nanofibers from soybean straw.They used

a commercial enzyme to extract nanofibers. This enzymatic-mechanical treatment yields cellulose nanofibers with diam-eters of 5–15 nm that can be useful for biotechnologicalapplications such as generation of bioethanol or biogas.Besides many other techniques, C. K. Saurabh et al. iso-lated cellulose nanofibers (diameter, 5–10 nm) from Gigan-tochloa scortechinii bamboo fibers. The resultant cellulosenanofibers were used as reinforcement material in epoxybased nanocomposites and showed improvement in tensilestrength, flexural strength, and modulus of nanocomposites.N. H. Mohd et al. discussed modification on nanocrystallinecellulose properties derived from empty fruit bunches andshowed the potential application for CO

2capture.

B. Yalcinkaya et al. reported thin-film nanofibrous com-posite membrane for dead-end seawater desalination fornanofiltration. The composite membrane consists of a three-layer system including a nonwoven part as the support-ing material, a nanofibrous scaffold as the porous surface,and an active layer. They prepared polyamide 6 nanofiberusing nanospider production line. The resultant nanofibersare promising candidates for use as new high-performancenanofiltration membranes due to their high flux and ionrejection. Uniaxial alignment of electrospun nanofibersshows a greater interest recently inmany fields. Y.-H.Wu et al.developed polypropylene coated spinneret and a metal spin-neret and used to carry out the single-fluid electrospinningprocess. They effectively utilize the electrostatic repulsionduring electrospinning and obtained improved alignment ofnanofibers.

Hindawi Publishing CorporationJournal of NanomaterialsVolume 2016, Article ID 2195787, 2 pageshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/2195787

2 Journal of Nanomaterials

Carbon nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes, carbonnanofibers, and graphene have recently been explored forenergy storage application such as supercapacitor due toadditional high specific surface area and unique electrical andchemical inertness properties. A. M. Saleem et al. presenteda comprehensive review on performance enhancement ofcarbon nanomaterials for supercapacitors. C. H. Su and C.H. Huang discuss the impact of substrate outgassing on thegrowth of carbon nanotubes (CNT) using the single-pulsedischarge method with aim to develop a simpler, safer, andmore energy efficient technique for growing CNTs havingzonal selectivity.

In summary, all authors put their great effort to presentthe production of functional nanofibers and showed varietyof applications in different technical fields. We hope thisspecial issue will provide better understanding of the subjectand also provide new horizon of functional nanofibers.

Acknowledgments

The team of guest editors sincerely appreciates the contribu-tion and efforts from all of the authors and referees to makethis special issue a success.

Zeeshan KhatriIck-Soo Kim

Seong Hun Kim

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