(245e) Advances in Pore Morphology Characterization for Water Treatment Membranes

A status quo and future development survey of pore size, pore size distribution and morphology characterization techniques for water treatment membranes will be presented. Most of the current available techniques can provide ?bulk? pore properties in the filtration membranes only and could not provide ?depth? profile of the pore properties and/or three-dimensional pore structure in the multilayer filtration membranes. The presentation will be divided into two parts: in the first part a briefly review of the current methods for characterizing filtration membrane pore will be given; in the second part, some innovative methods can give "depth profile" properties of pore and free volume in filtration membranes from micron-scale to angstrom will be introduced. Two of those innovative methods, nano-transmission x-ray microscope (NTXM) and positron annihilation spectroscopy (PAS) techniques will be presented thoroughly.