Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK.
Nat Commun. 2016 Sep 19;7:12804. doi: 10.1038/ncomms12804.
Currently, production of porous polymeric membranes for filtration is predominated by the phase-separation process. However, this method has reached its technological limit, and there have been no significant breakthrough over the last decade. Here we show, using polyvinylidene fluoride as a sample polymer, a new concept of membrane manufacturing by combining oriented green solvent crystallization and polymer migration is able to obtain high performance membranes with pure water permeation flux substantially higher than those with similar pore size prepared by conventional phase-separation processes. The new manufacturing procedure is governed by fewer operating parameters and is, thus, easier to control with reproducible results. Apart from the high water permeation flux, the prepared membranes also show excellent stable flux after fouling and superior mechanical properties of high pressure load and better abrasion resistance. These findings demonstrate the promise of a new concept for green manufacturing nanostructured polymeric membranes with high performances.
目前，用于过滤的多孔聚合物膜的生产主要采用相分离法。然而，该方法已经达到了技术极限，在过去十年中没有取得重大突破。在这里，我们以聚偏二氟乙烯（PVDF）为例，展示了一种新的膜制造概念，即将定向绿色溶剂结晶和聚合物迁移相结合，能够获得高性能膜，其纯水渗透通量远远高于通过传统相分离工艺制备的具有相似孔径的膜。新的制造工艺受较少的操作参数控制，因此更容易控制，结果具有重现性。除了高水渗透通量外，所制备的膜在污染后还表现出优异的稳定通量和优异的高压负荷机械性能以及更好的耐磨性。这些发现表明了一种用于制造具有高性能的绿色纳米结构化聚合物膜的新概念具有广阔的前景。
