(222a) Self-Assembly and Superhydrophobicity in Membrane Development for Water Application (Keynote Talk)

Controlling surface properties and pore morphology are key issues when developing membranes for water application.  The talk will be focus on 2 recent examples of membrane development in our group:

(1) Synthesis of fluorinated polyazoles and membrane manufacture for membrane distillation.  Polyoxadiazoles and polytriazoles with hydrophobic segments were synthesized and used for the membrane preparation by the following methods: phase inversion  (flat-sheet and hollow fiber) and electrospinning. The different configurations were tested for membrane distillation with high salt retention and water fluxes as high as 85 Kg m^-2 h^-1 were demonstrated (Husnul Maab, Lijo Francis, Ahmad Al-saadi, Cyril Aubry, Noreddine Ghaffour, Gary L. Amy and Suzana P. Nunes, submitted).

(2) Preparation of isoporous membranes (ultrafiltration range) by combination of phase inversion and self-assembly.  We have been developing block copolymer membranes with exceptionally high porosity and uniformity.  We have demonstrated that the process of pore formation can be highly influenced by the self-assembly in solution before casting the membrane. The membrane formation has been followed by advanced methods of microscopy (cryo FESEM, TEM tomography,  FIB, ESEM, AFM) and small angle x-ray scattering (R. Dorin, D. Marques, H. Sai, U. Vainio, W. Phillip, K. Peinemann, S. Nunes and U. Wiesner ^, Macro Letters, 2012).