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A combination of the remarkably simple technique of electrospinning, developed to fabricate polymer nanofibers, and sol–gel processing has been utilized to produce fine zinc oxide nanofibers with an average diameter of 70 nm. A non-toxic precursor solution of polyvinyl alcohol and zinc acetate was electrospun and the resulting fibers were then calcined at a relatively low temperature to produce ZnO nanofibers. Simultaneous thermal analyses were used to study the formation of ZnO nanofibers from the precursor material. X-ray diffraction was employed to analyze the phases and different microscopy techniques, such as scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy were used to study the morphology and size of the fibers. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy was employed to investigate the composition of the precursor and ZnO fibers. The specific surface area of the electrospun nanofibers was determined using the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller method and optical properties were measured by UV-Vis and PL spectroscopy. The very high specific surface area of the ZnO fibers makes them potential candidates for nanodevice applications in gas sensing, dye-sensitized solar cells, and UV/blue emission devices.

The formation of novel high aspect ratio nanofibers from polyesteramides based on ε-caprolactam and ε-caprolactone is reported. Nanofibers were prepared by the electrospinning method from polymer solution. Scanning electron microscopy images of nanofiber layers revealed that the diameter of fibers depended on the nature of the solvent or the mixture of solvents used and especially on the composition of polyesteramides.

Here we report the successful fabrication of tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) nanofibers using a scalable Forcespinning™ method. In this environmentally-friendly process, water was used as the only solvent for both Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP, the sacrificial polymer) and the metal chloride precursor salts. The obtained precursor nanofiber mats were calcinated at temperatures ranging from 500–800°C to produce ITO nanofibers with diameters as small as 400 nm. The developed ITO nanofibers were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction analysis.

Mesoporous titanium dioxide (TiO₂) hollow nanofibers (HNFs) were successfully prepared by a facile electrospinning and calcination method. Techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were utilized to characterize TiO₂ fibers. It was revealed that TiO₂ crystals with an appropriate anatase fraction (71.58%) were grown and a tubular mesoporous structure was formed with a high specific surface area. Photodecomposition of methyl orange (MO) solution showed that TiO₂ HNFs exhibited much higher photocatalytic activity than corresponding TiO₂ nanofibers (NFs) and loose-structured nanofibers (LNFs). The significant enhancement of photocatalytic activity was attributed to both the sufficient growth of active anatase phase primarily and a tubular mesoporous nature of TiO₂ HNFs.

ZnO@CeO₂ core–shell hetero-structural nanofibers (NFs) were synthesized by a coaxial electrospinning method and the materials characterization results proved that the core–shell hetero-structure was formed. Furthermore, the sensing properties test indicated that the ZnO@CeO₂ NFs exhibited higher response values and enhanced selectivity to acetone in low concentration range (0.2–10ppm) compared with ZnO and CeO₂ NFs, which showed the potential value in the field of diabetes diagnose. It is suggested that the enhanced sensitivity to acetone is attributed to the synergistic effect of one-dimensional (1D) structure and the formation of ZnO and CeO₂ hetero-structure.