Highly stretchable nanofiber-coated hybrid yarn with wavy structure fabricated by novel airflow-electrospinning method.

Highlights • A novel airflow-electrospinning method to prepare nanofiber-coated hybrid yarn. • Prepared nanofiber-coated hybrid yarn had a uniform and close-knit out-of-plane wavy structure. • The hybrid yarn possessed a high strain of 531.98%. • The method was suitable for the preparation of highly elastic hybrid yarn with low-elastic polymer nanofiber layer. Abstract Nanofiber-coated hybrid yarn not only exhibited the performance advantages of coating nanofiber-layer, but also possessed the structural feature of core layer, which could endow it excellent application prospect. Previous studies for fabricating nanofiber-coated hybrid yarn had limitations of poor yarn structure and discontinuity, and obtained hybrid yarns with a small strain. Herein, a novel stepped airflow-electrospinning method, in which stepped airflow field could effectively control the movement of nanofibers, was proposed to spin continuous nanofiber-coated hybrid yarn. Interestingly, a highly stretchable nanofiber-coated hybrid yarn with uniform wavy structure was obtained by our designed method, achieving an ultra-high strain of 531.98%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]