Fabrication of a poly(N‐vinyl‐2‐pyrrolidone) modified macroporous polypropylene membrane via one‐pot reversible‐addition fragmentation chain‐transfer polymerization and click chemistry

Abstract

contributed to the characterization and permeation and antifouling properties examination of the unmodified and modified macroporous polypropylene membranes. Bing Hu contributed to the preparation of the clickable membrane and the grafting of poly(N-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone) onto the macroporous polypropylene membrane surface. Correspondence to: J. Zhou (E -mail: zhoujin_ah@163.com)ABSTRACT: In this study, a macroporous polypropylene membrane (MPPM) was grafted with hydrophilic poly(N-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone) (PNVP) based on a one-pot reversible-addition fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization and click chemistry. First, we prepared the clickable membrane by bromination and following S N 2 nucleophilic substitution reaction; then, click chemistry and RAFT polymerization were performed in one-pot to graft PNVP to the MPPM surface. The surface characterizations, including attenuated total reflectance/Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and field-emission scanning electron microscopy, illustrated that PNVP was really grafted onto the MPPM surface. The permeation and antifouling characteristics of the MPPMs were measured by the filtration of a bovine serum albumin dispersion; this showed that in contrast to the nascent membrane, the grafted membrane efficiently obstructed protein molecules because of the compactly grafted polymer chains. The hydrophilicity and antifouling properties of MPPM were greatly ameliorated after modification.