Facile fabrication of polylactic acid/polyethylene glycol micro-nano fabrics with aligned fibrous roughness for enhancing liquid anisotropic wetting performance via double-stage drafting melt blowing process

The liquid anisotropic wetting properties have garnered considerable interest due to the rapidly rising usage of functional micro-nano fabrics in sanitary product applications. However, designing and preparing such materials in a manner that is easy, safe, and vast in a large scale remains a problematic issue. In this work, a poly (lactic acid) / poly (ethylene glycol) (PLA/PEG) micro-nano fabric with aligned fibrous roughness inspired by bamboo leaves was designed and prepared via a simple double-stage drafting melt blowing process. The results indicate that aligned fibrous roughness and homogenized fiber diameters ranging from 4.4 to 2.7 µm were successfully tailed by adjusting the drafting ratios from 1.0 to 3.0. Additionally, benefiting from the aligned fibrous roughness, the PLA/PEG micro-nano fabric demonstrated excellent anisotropic wetting performance, evidenced by a clear contrast between parallel static water contact angles (θ//) and perpendicular (θ⊥) to the longitudinal direction, as well as remarkable contact angle hysteresis. Additionally, the samples had a significant aspect ratio of 3.16. As a result, this PLA/PEG micro-nano fabric may be an alternative for medical and health applications such as medical dressings and meshes.