Recent update on electrospinning and electrospun nanofibers: current trends and their applications Arif Nadaf, Akash Gupta, Nazeer Hasan, Fauziya, Shadaan Ahmad, Prashant Kesharwani * and Farhan J. Ahmad * Electrospinning is a versatile and viable technique for generating ultrathin fibers. Remarkable progress has been made in techniques for creating electro-spun and non-electro-spun nanofibers. Nanofibers were the center of attention for industries and researchers due to their simplicity in manufacture and setup. The review discusses a thorough overview of both electrospinning and non-electrospinning processes, including their setup, fabrication process, components, and applications. The review starts with an overview of the field of nanotechnology, the background of electrospinning, the surge in demand for nanofiber production, the materials needed to make nanofibers, and the critical process variables that determine the characteristics of nanofibers. Additionally, the diverse applications of electrospun nanofibers, such as smart mats, catalytic supports, filtration membranes, energy storage/heritage components, electrical devices (batteries), and biomedical scaffolds, are then covered. Further, the review concentrates on the most recent and pertinent developments in nanofibers that are connected to the use of nanofibers, focusing on the most illustrative cases. Finally, challenges and their possible solutions, marketing, and the future prospects of nanofiber development are discussed. 1. Introduction Nanotechnology is one of the fastest growing elds of study and has entered the profession of medicine and other industries as well. Due to the wide variety of applications many researchers hailing from countries all over the world have shown their interest in the technology. With respect to the pharmaceutical industry, nanotechnology made a mark because of its efficacy and reduced adverse events. 1–5 Various elds of nanotechnology are discussed by Adlakha-Hutcheon et al. 6 and are diagram- matically shown in Fig. 1. Nowadays a maximum number of drug targeting methods are based on nano-formulations because targeting therapy becomes easier when given in the form of a nano-formula- tion. 7–16 In the category of nano-formulations nanobers have vast application in the eld of medicines, 17–19,19–25 and amongst the nanobers the magnetic nanobers have different applica- tions due to their characteristics and magnetic memory, as well as environmental treatment, catalysts, and biomedicine. 26,27 Nanobers can be simply dened as the bers of the poly- mers having the size in the range of nanometer where the temperature of calcination and holding time affects the shape, diameter, ber morphology, and crystallite size of the nanober structure. There are plethora of polymers that are being used for the manufacturing of nanobers and other than above mentioned factors the diameter of the nanober heavily depends on the type of polymer used for the fabrication. 28 When it comes the length of a unit nanober, it is almost around 60 nm, but the diameter does not vary much, it is found around 100 nm. Evaluations of the nanobers are done using vibrating sample magnetometer, X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron. 29 In the method of creation the electrospinning is very common and the basic principle of this method revolves around the static charges that are produced due to stretching of the polymer ber repel each other which results in the formation of the bers. 30 Application of the nanobers heavily depends upon the drug loaded in them as is the case with all the formulation in the pharmaceutical industry. Some of the applications include wound healing, targeted delivery of drugs, pH-sensitive drug therapy, gene delivery, photodynamic therapy, veterinary delivery, stent coating, theragnostic delivery of drugs, ophthalmic delivery, etc. 31 Apart from this the general nano- bers have environmental applications also including, air ltration in which nanober beds/mats of mesh size 500 nm alone or in combination with any other ltration media used to lter the polluted air, dust particles. These lters work on the principle of absorption of dust particles over the individual nanobers in the mesh which makes them highly efficacious. Also, these nanober lters are used widely in vehicle cabin Department of Pharmaceutics, School of Pharmaceutical Education and Research, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, 110062, India. E-mail: ahmad@jamiahamdard.ac.in; prashantdops@gmail.com; Tel: +91-9810720387; +91-7999710141 Cite this: RSC Adv. , 2022, 12, 23808 Received 6th May 2022 Accepted 13th July 2022 DOI: 10.1039/d2ra02864f rsc.li/rsc-advances 23808 | RSC Adv. , 2022, 12, 23808–23828 © 2022 The Author(s). Published by the Royal Society of Chemistry RSC Advances REVIEW Open Access Article. Published on 23 August 2022. Downloaded on 8/26/2022 6:30:26 AM. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. View Article Online View Journal | View Issue