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<title-group><doi>094</doi>
<article-title>Manufacturing and Characterization of Coaxial Microfibers with Different Molecular Weights using Melt Electrospinning Technique</article-title>
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<author>Junghyuk Ko<sup>1,a</sup>, Jason Keonhag Lee<sup>1,b</sup>, Patrick C. Lee<sup>2</sup> and Martin Byung-Guk Jun<sup>1,c</sup>  </author>

<aff><sup>1</sup>University of Victoria, Mechanical Engineering Department, Canada. </aff>

<email><a href="mailto:jko@me.uvic.ca"><sup>a</sup>jko@me.uvic.ca</a></email>

<email><a href="mailto:jason92@uvic.ca"><sup>b</sup>jason92@uvic.ca</a></email>

<email><a href="mailto:mbgjun@uvic.ca  "><sup>c</sup>mbgjun@uvic.ca  </a></email>

<aff><sup>2</sup>University of Vermont, Mechanical Engineering Department, US. </aff>

<email><a href="mailto:patrickc.lee@uvm.edu ">patrickc.lee@uvm.edu </a></email>

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<title>ABSTRACT</title>
<p>A core-shell microfiber can be fabricated using a coaxial electrospinning technique. The coaxial electropinning technique is prevalent in solution electrospinning to fabricate nanofibers. However, the coaxial technique using melt electrospinning setup to fabricate microfibers is novel. The coaxial microfibers can be used to improve the current filtration or biomedical applications due to more flexibility in structure design. This work focuses on fabricating coaxial microfibers by using 10k M<sub>n</sub> Polycaprolactone (PCL) in the shell and 45k M<sub>n</sub> PCL in the core. The fabricated coaxial microfibers are analysed by comparing to the original 10k M<sub>n</sub> PCL and 45k M<sub>n</sub> PCL microfibers. The cross sectional images of the coaxial microfiber are taken using a scanning electron microscope to verify the presence of two phases. Then, microfiber sheets were fabricated with 10k M<sub>n</sub>, 45k M<sub>n</sub>, and 45k/10k core-shell coaxial PCL microfibers. The microfiber sheet is then machined with a femtosecond laser machining system into a tensile testing specimen, which is tested on a tensile testing machine to observe the stress-strain characteristics of coaxial microfibers. The results conclude that coaxial microfiber sheet had higher ultimate tensile strength than the other molecular weighted PCL and the strain was in a region between 10k M<sub>n</sub> and 45k M<sub>n</sub> PCL. However, this result needs further verification, and thus is currently being confirmed through additional experiments. As of our knowledge, we are the first to fabricate coaxial microfibers of 10k and 45k M<sub>n</sub> PCL using a melt coaxial electrospinning technique.  </p><p><italic>Keywords: </italic>Coaxial electrospinning, Melt electrospinning, Microfiber, Laser machining, Tensile testing. </p>
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