  Electrospinning technologies for the realization of active polymeric
nanomaterials can be easily up-scaled, opening perspectives to industrial
exploitation, and due to their versatility they can be employed to finely
tailor the size, morphology and macroscopic assembly of fibers as well as their
functional properties. Light-emitting or other active polymer nanofibers, made
of conjugated polymers or of blends embedding chromophores or other functional
dopants, are suitable for various applications in advanced photonics and
sensing technologies. In particular, their almost one-dimensional geometry and
finely tunable composition make them interesting materials for developing novel
lasing devices. However, electrospinning techniques rely on a large variety of
parameters and possible experimental geometries, and they need to be carefully
optimized in order to obtain suitable topographical and photonic properties in
the resulting nanostructures. Targeted features include smooth and uniform
fiber surface, dimensional control, as well as filament alignment, enhanced
light emission, and stimulated emission. We here present various optimization
strategies for electrospinning methods which have been implemented and
developed by us for the realization of lasing architectures based on polymer
nanofibers. The geometry of the resulting nanowires leads to peculiar
light-scattering from spun filaments, and to controllable lasing
characteristics.
