Formation of porous bilayer hollow fibre membranes

Support membranes in bioartificial organs contact blood or plasma on one-side and adhesion dependent cells on the other side. Since membranes for biomedical applications, such as for haemodialysis, are optimised for blood contact and membranes for biotechnological applications for cell contact, there are no membranes available addressing the requirements of artificial organ technology. One approach is the preparation of porous bilayer membranes with a wall consisting of two chemical different polymer layers. Results of the preparation of such membrane types using triple spinnerets and a wet phase inversion process are shown here. It is demonstrated that one of the most important parameter is the structural integrity of the membrane wall at the interface between both layers. A new spinneret construction is presented where the membrane forming polymer solutions are layered in the spinneret before extrusion. As a result porous bilayer hollow fibre membranes with a high structural integrity could be manufactured using different composed polysulfone (PSu) polymer solutions for model investigation.