Fabrication of Super-Hydrophobic Membrane with Hydrophilic Polyethersulphone

Abstract

Here a simple method was developed to fabricate super-hydrophobic membrane with hydrophilic Polyethersulphone (PES) via a sol-gel process. The influences of experimental parameters i.e. the precursor treated time, the baking temperature of the membrane, and the fluorinated time on the hydrophobicity of the membranes were extensively investigated. The correspondent hydrophobicity was crosschecked by the contact angle measurement. For the optimum condition, the contact angle of the resulted super-hydrophobic membrane can be increased to 156°. The FTIR analysis confirmed that the membrane surfaces were covered by hydrophobic functional groups, which resulted in both higher surface roughness and higher heterogeneity, and therefore higher hydrophobicity. The micro/nano-meter crater-like protrusions on the membrane surfaces were observed from the images obtained from both AFM and SEM measurements. Moreover, the spongy holes and the finger-like holes were observed in cortex and intermediate layer respectively, from the cross-section of the SEM images.