Elsevier

Journal of Colloid and Interface Science

Volume 552, 15 September 2019, Pages 719-727
Journal of Colloid and Interface Science

Regular Article
A facile method to modify polypropylene membrane by polydopamine coating via inkjet printing technique for superior performance

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcis.2019.05.108Get rights and content

Abstract

Membrane surface functionalization based on mussel-inspired polydopamine (PDA) deposition for enhancing antifouling ability has attracted considerable attention. However, high cost of dopamine (DA) and long-time of reaction during self-polymerization of DA in aqueous solution remain the major problems impeding its practical application. This study provided a first report on a low-cost and facile membrane modification approach based on inkjet printing of DA and sodium periodate (SP) to rapidly deposit PDA on polypropylene (PP) membrane. Compared with the pristine PP membrane and DA printed PP membrane, the PDA-SP coated PP membrane demonstrated superior hydrophilicity (67.2°), high pure water permeability (2156.8 L·m−2·h−1) and antifouling property, due to the improved oxidation degree of PDA. Moreover, the modified membrane possesses good chemical stability in aqueous solution over the wide range of pH 2–9. The inkjet printing integrated oxidant-induced mussel-inspired modification proposed in this study is substrate-independent, and can be applied to various geometries and materials, showing broad application prospects in membrane fabrication.

Introduction

Membrane fouling, which causes a decline in the membrane life and economic performance, has been considered as the major drawback restricting the wide application of membrane separation technology [1], [2], [3], [4]. Polypropylene (PP) has been regarded as one of the most popular microfiltration (MF)/ultrafiltration (UF) membrane materials due to its advantages of excellent mechanical strength, film forming ability, chemical resistance, thermal stability and especially low cost [5], [6]. However, this material is prone to membrane fouling due to its intrinsic hydrophobicity [7], [8]. Hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity has been regarded as one of the most important properties related with fouling propensity [9], [10], [11]. For the hydrophobic membranes, hydrophilic modifications including coating [12], [13], [14], grafting [15], [16] and blending [17], [18] have been regarded as effective approaches to mitigate membrane fouling.

Recently, mussel-inspired surface chemistry has been widely applied in surface modification due to its superior adhesive and cohesive properties [19], [20], [21]. Membrane surface functionalization based on mussel-inspired polydopamine (PDA) deposition for enhancing antifouling ability has attracted considerable attention [20], [21], [22], [23]. Functional groups (catechol, amine and imine) of PDA have high affinities with diverse functional molecules, endowing PDA modified membranes extra superior features [24], [25]. Immobilization of inorganic nanoparticles [26], [27] and polymers [28], [29] onto the membrane surface via PDA-based co-deposition has been extensively studied. These surface-modified membranes showed superior surface properties including high hydrophilicity, antifouling and properly sized pores. Despite the advantages in PDA-assisted modification, high cost of dopamine (DA) and longtime of reaction during typical self-polymerization of DA in aqueous solution [30], [31] still exists as problems impeding its practical application, calling for efficient modification methods to remedy these shortfalls.

Inkjet printing has emerged as an attractive technique for design of functional-substrates and for surface modification. Taking advantage of low production costs, precise deposition control and easy access to graphical painting, inkjet printing technique can tunably print functional layers directly on various substrates [32], [33]. For this reason, inkjet printing has attracted extensive interests in various engineering fields, including electronics [34], sensor [33], particle dispersion [35], tissue engineering [36] and others. Incorporation of this novel film-forming technique has opened up existing possibilities in membrane preparation and modification. Inkjet printing of graphene oxide (GO) has been reported to be capable of fabricating membranes for effective water purification [37]. Based on inkjet printing of silver-nanoparticle (AgNPs), AgNPs modified polyurethane fibrous membrane with superior antibacterial performance has been prepared [38]. Badalov et al. [39] performed a fluorine contained diamine monomer inkjet printing on m-phenylenediamine-based polyamide as a printable substrate, which yielded improved salt rejection. These studies suggested that inkjet printing was a rapid and low-cost way to modify membranes. It is therefore envisaged that inkjet printing can efficiently deposit PDA on PP membrane surface. In the literature, several approaches based on oxidant promotion have been developed to facilitate self-polymerization of DA. The polymerization and deposition rate of PDA can be improved to some extent by using various triggers, such as CuSO4/H2O2 [40], FeCl3/H2O2 [20], ammonium persulfate (APS) [41], sodium periodate (SP) [42], [43] and so forth. It is hypothesized that, inkjet printing of DA integrated with oxidant-induced strategy would well overcome the shortfalls of the conventional PDA-assisted modification method, and provide a facile, low cost and efficient alternative for membrane modification. Nonetheless, to our knowledge, no research regarding the use of DA inkjet printing for PDA deposition on separation membrane has been reported up to date.

In this paper, PP membrane was surface modified with PDA deposition via DA inkjet printing, followed by SP inkjet printing. The properties including chemical properties, hydrophilicity, morphology, water flux, filtration resistance and antifouling performance of the modified membranes were measured.

Section snippets

Materials

PP membrane (0.2 μm normalized pore size) was produced Haining Taoyuan membrane separation equipment factory. Chemicals including n-propyl alcohol (C3H7OH, purity of ≥99.5%), glycerine (C3H8O3, purity of ≥99.0%), acetic acid (CH3COOH3, purity of ≥99.5%), sodium acetate (CH3COONa, purity of ≥99.0%) and sodium periodate (NaIO4, purity of ≥99.5%) were purchased from Sinopharm Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd. Dopamine hydrochloride (C8H11NO2·HCl, purity of ≥98%) was purchased from Aladdin Chemistry Co.,

Analysis of membrane surface chemical structure

It had been proved that the SP-triggered method possessed high deposition rate of PDA thin layers. As shown in Fig. 2a, the color of printed PP membrane (DA/SP = 1) changes from white to brown with the increase of reaction time. The color of membrane surface rapidly darkens within 2 h after which it becomes stable. The ATR-FTIR measurement was used to analyze the chemical structure of membranes and to further verify the fast deposition. The spectrum of the PP-PDA-SP-0.5 h (Fig. 2a) is

Conclusions

Membrane surface functionalization based on mussel-inspired polydopamine (PDA) deposition for enhancing antifouling ability has attracted considerable attention [20], [21], [22], [23]. Despite the advantages in PDA-assisted modification, high cost of dopamine (DA) and longtime of reaction during typical self-polymerization of DA in aqueous solution [30], [31] still exists as problems impeding its practical application, calling for efficient modification methods to remedy these shortfalls. In

Acknowledgements

This study was financially supported by National College Students Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program (201710345025), Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (Q17E080011) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (51578509).

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