Spray coating of polysulfone/poly(ethylene glycol) block polymer on macroporous substrates followed by selective swelling for composite ultrafiltration membranes  

作　　者：Dongwei Ma Zhaogen Wang Tao Liu Yunxia Hu Yong Wang 

机构地区：[1]State Key Laboratory of Materials-Oriented Chemical Engineering,College of Chemical Engineering,Nanjing Tech University,Nanjing 211816,China [2]State Key Laboratory of Separation Membranes and Membrane Processes,School of Materials Science and Engineering,Tiangong University,Tianjin 300387,China

出　　处：《Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering》2021年第1期85-91,共7页中国化学工程学报（英文版）

基　　金：Financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21706119);the Program of Excellent Innovation Teams of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions;the Project of Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD);the partial support by the Open Fund of State Key Laboratory of Separation Membranes and Membrane Process (M1-201702)。

摘　　要：Polysulfone(PSF) is extensively used for the production of ultrafiltration(UF) membranes thanks to its high strength,chemical stability,and good processibility.However,PSF is intrinsically hydrophobic,and hydrophilic modification is always required to PSF-based membranes if they are intended to be used in aqueous systems.Facile strategies to prepare hydrophilic PSF membranes are thus highly demanded.Herein we spray coat a PSF-based amphiphilic block polymer onto macroporous substrates followed by selective swelling to prepare flat-sheet PSF UF membranes.The polymer is a triblock polymer containing PSF as the majority middle block tethered with shorter block of polyethylene glycol(PEG) on both ends,that is,PEG-b-PSF-b-PEG.We use the technique of spray coa ting to homogeneously dispense diluted triblock polymer solutions on the top of macroporous supports,instantly resulting in uniform,defect-free polymer coating layers with the thickness down to ~1.2 μm.The bi-layered composite structures are then immerged in ethanol/acetone mixture to generate mesoscale pores in the coating layers following the mechanism of selective swelling-induced pore generation,thus producing composite membranes with the mesoporous triblock polymer coating as the selective layers.This facile strategy is free from additional hydrophilic modification and much smaller dosages of polymers are used compared to conventional casting methods.The pore sizes,porositie s,hydrophilicity,and consequently the separation properties of the membranes can be flexibly tuned by changing the swelling duration and the composition of the swelling bath.This strategy combining spray coating and selective swelling is upscalable for the production of highperformance PSF UF membranes.

关 键 词：Spray coating POLYSULFONE Block copolymers Selective swelling Ultrafiltration membranes 

分 类 号：TQ051.893[化学工程]