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Publication

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

Journal Contribution - Journal Article

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.
Journal: Angewandte Chemie - International Edition
ISSN: 1433-7851
Issue: 48
Volume: 58
Pages: 17175 - 17179
Publication year:2019
BOF-keylabel:yes
IOF-keylabel:yes
BOF-publication weight:6
CSS-citation score:2
Authors:International
Authors from:Higher Education
Accessibility:Open