Issue 14, 2024

Fabrication of nanoparticle array membranes by integrating semi-crystalline polymer self-assembly with NIPS for water treatment

Abstract

The integration of polymer self-assembly with non-solvent induced phase separation (SNIPS) represents a recent advancement in membrane fabrication. This breakthrough allows for the fabrication of membranes with uniformly sized pores, enabling precise and fast separation through a phase inversion process commonly used in industrial fabrication. Currently, block copolymers are used in implementing the SNIPS strategy. In order to facilitate an easier and more flexible fabrication procedure, we employed the widely used semi-crystalline polymer polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) as the base material for achieving SNIPS through self-seeding. This process involves filtering the PVDF casting solution to induce microphase separation and generate crystal seeds. Subsequently, NIPS is applied to enable the growth of crystal seeds into uniformly distributed nanoparticles with consistent size and shape, ultimately resulting in a membrane with a uniform pore size. The fabricated membrane exhibited improved flux (2924.67 ± 28.02 L m−2 h−1 at 0.5 bar) and rejection (91% for 500 nm polystyrene particles). Notably, the microphase separation in the casting solution is a distinguishing feature of the SNIPS compared to NIPS. In this study, we found that the microphase separation of semi-crystalline polymers is also crucial for achieving membranes with uniform pore sizes. This finding may extend the potential application of the SNIPS strategy to include semi-crystalline polymers.

Graphical abstract: Fabrication of nanoparticle array membranes by integrating semi-crystalline polymer self-assembly with NIPS for water treatment

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
29 Dec 2023
Accepted
14 May 2024
First published
20 May 2024
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Nanoscale Adv., 2024,6, 3543-3552

Fabrication of nanoparticle array membranes by integrating semi-crystalline polymer self-assembly with NIPS for water treatment

Y. Ma, X. Zhao and B. He, Nanoscale Adv., 2024, 6, 3543 DOI: 10.1039/D3NA01157G

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