CDs/PBAT Nanofiber Films With High Tensile Strength and Flame-Retardant Property via Microfluidic Technology

The poly(butylene adipate-co-terephthalate) (PBAT) nanofiber film prepared by electrospinning method exhibits limited application in many fields due to its poor flame retardancy and machinal property, despite being a biodegradable material with exceptional toughness and ductility properties. In this work, we employed microfluidic technology to continuously produce blue fluorescent carbon dots (CDs) on an aluminum-based microfluidic chip using citrate and ethanolamine as precursors. Subsequently, utilizing microfluidic electrospinning technology, the CDs/PBAT composite nanofiber films with blue fluorescence were prepared in situ reaction. Interestingly, compared to pure PBAT nanofiber membranes, the CDs/PBAT composite nanofiber membranes exhibit a tensile strength of 4.31 MPa, representing a remarkable increase of 3.24 times, and an elongation at break of 491%, indicating an improvement of 1.62 times. More importantly, it had demonstrated that the incorporation of CDs into PBAT can achieve flame-retardant effects. We firmly believe that the microfluidic strategy could open up a new idea for the synthesis of CDs and point out the direction for the meaningful fabrication of PBAT nanofiber film with high tensile strength and flame-retardant property.