The Ultrafast and Continuous Fabrication of a Polydimethylsiloxane Membrane by Ultraviolet-Induced Polymerization

Zhihao Si; Jingfang Li; Liang Ma; Di Cai; Shufeng Li; Jan Baeyens; Jan Degrève; Jun Nie; Tianwei Tan; Peiyong Qin

doi:10.1002/anie.201908386

The Ultrafast and Continuous Fabrication of a Polydimethylsiloxane Membrane by Ultraviolet-Induced Polymerization

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2019 Nov 25;58(48):17175-17179. doi: 10.1002/anie.201908386. Epub 2019 Oct 17.

Authors

Zhihao Si¹, Jingfang Li², Liang Ma³, Di Cai¹, Shufeng Li¹, Jan Baeyens^{3

4}, Jan Degrève⁵, Jun Nie², Tianwei Tan¹, Peiyong Qin¹

Affiliations

¹ National Energy R&D Center for Biorefinery, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, No. 15 North 3rd Ring East Road, Beijing, 100029, P. R. China.
² State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering & Beijing Laboratory of Biomedical Materials, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, No. 15 North 3rd Ring East Road, Beijing, 100029, P. R. China.
³ Beijing Advanced Innovation Centre of Soft Matter and Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, No. 15 North 3rd Ring East Road, Beijing, 100029, P. R. China.
⁴ School of Engineering, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK.
⁵ Department of Chemical Engineering, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, W. de Croylaan 46, B-3001, Leuven, Belgium.

PMID: 31549761
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201908386

Abstract

The polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) membrane commonly used for separation of biobutanol from fermentation broth fails to meet demand owing to its discontinuous and polluting thermal fabrication. Now, an UV-induced polymerization strategy is proposed to realize the ultrafast and continuous fabrication of the PDMS membrane. UV-crosslinking of synthesized methacrylate-functionalized PDMS (MA-PDMS) is complete within 30 s. The crosslinking rate is three orders of magnitude larger than the conventional thermal crosslinking. The MA-PDMS membrane shows a versatile potential for liquid and gas separations, especially featuring an excellent pervaporation performance for n-butanol. Filler aggregation, the major bottleneck for the development of high-performance mixed matrix membranes (MMMs), is overcome, because the UV polymerization strategy demonstrates a freezing effect towards fillers in polymer, resulting in an extremely high-loading silicalite-1/MA-PDMS MMM with uniform particle distribution.

Keywords: UV polymerization; membranes; n-butanol; pervaporation; polymers.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Abstract

Publication types

Grants and funding