How Porous Nanofibers Have Enhanced the Engineering of Advanced Materials: A Review

Nanofibers are one-dimensional nanomaterials
with a superfine diameter and many potential applications
due to their desirable characteristics such as small diameter,
high surface area, high flexibility, high porosity, and special
mechanical properties. In the recent years, porous nanofibers
have been the subject of considerable research works in a
wide range of applications owing to high surface area to
volume ratios and high porosity ratio. Combination of
superfine diameter and porosity in porous nanofibers
represent an emergent class of nanoporous materials with
maximum conceivable specific surface area, high pores
volume and extreme adsorption capacity that could lead to
improvement in many applications such as tissue engineering,
catalysts, sensors, batteries, energy storage,
adsorption/separation, filtration, medical applications, solar
cells, superhydrophobic surfaces, supercapacitors, and
conductors. The present review focuses on the current
progresses in the fabrication mechanisms and
characterization methods of porous nanofibers. In addition,
some application capabilities of porous nanofibers that were
reported in literature are discussed and an outline of future
trends is presented.