Polymer Membranes with Vertically Oriented Pores Constructed by 2D Freezing at Ambient Temperature.
Polymer membranes with well-controlled and vertically oriented pores are of great importance in the applications for water treatment and tissue engineering. On the basis of two-dimensional solvent freezing, we report environmentally friendly facile fabrication of such membranes from a broad spectrum of polymer resources including poly(vinylidene fluoride), poly(l-lactic acid), polyacrylonitrile, polystyrene, polysulfone and polypropylene. Dimethyl sulfone, diphenyl sulfone, and arachidic acid are selected as green solvents crystallized in the polymer matrices under two-dimensional temperature gradients induced by water at ambient temperature. Parallel Monte Carlo simulations of the lattice polymers demonstrate that the directional process is feasible for each polymer holding suitable interaction with a corresponding solvent. As a typical example of this approach, poly(vinylidene fluoride) membranes exhibit excellent tensile strength, high optical transparence, and outstanding separation performance for the mixtures of yeasts and lactobacilli.
['Liang|Hong-Qing|HQ|', 'Ji|Ke-Jia|KJ|', 'Zha|Li-Yun|LY|', 'Hu|Wen-Bing|WB|', 'Ou|Yang|Y|', 'Xu|Zhi-Kang|ZK|']
temperature gradient Monte Carlo simulation directional freezing porous membrane vertical pores