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Nanofiber’s morphology features (diameter, pore size, roughness) together with mechanical properties and biocompatibility are crucial for the evaluation of nanofibrous web’s structures properties. Surface’s morphology strongly affects among all the physical, mechanical, and biological properties of the web’s structures. A detailed characterization of scanning electron microscopy images is decisive and widely used. Image analysis include most often the determination of fiber amount and their diameters on the monitored area; occasionally also the porosity and pore size determination; and very rarely the other parameters like linearity/curvature rating or orientation of fibers etc. Characterization by confocal microscopy is not yet commonly applied. However, the detailed observation of the surface and its evaluation bring many advantages, especially surface roughness determination but also the surface kurtosis and surface skewness etc. This work briefly summarizes the evaluation methods applicable for morphological characterization of nanofibers from SEM and confocal microscopy; and bringing closer insight for possible prediction of physical, mechanical, and biological properties of the nanofibers.
Keywords: Nanofiber characterization, image analysis, scanning electron microscopy, confocal microscopy© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.