Dr Yen Truong.

Dr Yen Truong: investigating textiles created by electrospinning

Dr Yen Truong leads CSIRO’s electrospinning program, which contributes novel fibres and textiles for research on biomedical applications, air filtration and treatments for contaminated water.

• 16 December 2008 | Updated 14 October 2011

• Current activities
• Cell growth on electrospun membranes
• Background
• Research partners

Current activities

Since 2005 Dr Truong has led the build-up of CSIRO’s expertise in electrospinning.

Electrospinning is a simple and versatile method for producing ultra-fine fibres from a variety of materials, including polymers, composites and ceramics.

Electrospun fibres range in diameter from 100 to 1 000 nanometres. A nanometre is one millionth of a millimetre.

Dr Truong’s research team is investigating:

• medical textiles for wound care, nerve regeneration and tissue culture
• air filtration for the removal of extremely fine particles
• water treatments for the removal of metals such as cadmium.

Dr Truong also supplies electrospun textiles to a CSIRO project on flexible electronics that can be integrated into clothing fabric.

Pictured below is Dr Yen Truong setting up some apparatus for producing electrospun fibres.

Dr Yen Truong with some electrospinning apparatus.

Cell growth on electrospun membranes

One of Dr Truong’s interests is the use of electrospun membranes (webs of ultra-fine fibres) for the growth of cells. She is keen to expand her work in this area.

'Cell culture on electrospun substrate is the hot thing in science at the moment in biomaterials,' Dr Truong said.

'Electrospun textiles could make a significant contribution by providing the right surface for cell growth.'

Background

Dr Truong has a background in chemistry, in particular organic, analytical and surface chemistry.

Dr Truong has completed a Doctor of Philosophy. During her studies Dr Truong worked on techniques for changing the surface properties of natural fibres.

She applied these skills to colour inkjet printing of wool and cellulose fibres (wood pulp), devising a process to modify the surface chemistry of wool with a protein coating that enhances inkjet printing quality.

Dr Truong has also worked in leather research, improving the properties of sheepskin, cattle hides and kangaroo leather through different tanning processes.

Before joining CSIRO, Dr Truong was member of a small team developing an on-line water monitoring instrument at the Water Studies Centre, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.

The objective was to remove nutrients and metals from contaminated water, using flow injection analysis as the measurement technique.

Research Partners

Dr Truong collaborates with researchers in CSIRO Molecular Health Technologies in studies of cell adhesion to electrospun membranes with different fibre orientations.

Find out more about how Electrospinning creates ultra-fine fibres for many applications.