Design and fabrication of electrospun polyethersulfone nanofibrous scaffold for high‐flux nanofiltration membranes |
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| Authors: | Zhaohui Tang Changquan Qiu Jeffrey R McCutcheon Kyunghwan Yoon Hongyang Ma Dufei Fang Eric Lee Clint Kopp Benjamin S Hsiao Benjamin Chu |
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| Institution: | 1. State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130022, China;2. Department of Chemistry, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794‐3400;3. Department of Chemical, Materials and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Connecticut Storrs, Connecticut 06269‐3222;4. Stonybrook Purification, Inc., Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794‐3400 |
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| Abstract: | A novel class of high‐flux and low‐fouling thin‐film nanofibrous composite (TFNC) membranes, containing a thin hydrophilic top‐layer coating, a nanofibrous mid‐layer scaffold and a non‐woven microfibrous support, has been demonstrated for nanofiltration (NF) applications. In this study, the issues related to the design and fabrication of a polyethersulfone (PES) electrospun nanofibrous scaffold for TFNC NF membranes were investigated. These issues included the influence of solvent mixture ratio, solute concentration, additives, relative humidity (RH), and solution flow rate on the morphology of an electrospun PES nanofibrous scaffold, the distribution of fiber diameter, the adhesion between the PES scaffold and a typical poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) non‐woven support, as well as the tensile properties of the nanofibrous PES/non‐woven PET composite substrates. Uniform and thin nanofibrous PES scaffolds with strong adhesion to the nanofiber‐PET non‐woven are several of the key parameters to optimize the NF performance of TFNC membranes. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 47: 2288–2300, 2009 |
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| Keywords: | adhesion electrospinning filtration membranes nanocomposites nanofiber polyethersulfone |
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