Ultrafine
particulate matters (PMs) are an imminent threat to the human respiratory
system, as their sizes are comparable to and even smaller than human
tissues. To cope with this situation, researchers have developed
and commercialized various personal dust proof masks. However, because
of the relatively thick filter membrane to guarantee filtering efficiency,
a huge pressure drop across the active filter layer is inevitable
and breathing through it becomes uncomfortable. In this work, we investigated
the performance of electrospun polybenzimidazole (PBI) nanofiber membrane
filters that can potentially be used for dust proof masks or other
high-performance filters. Thanks to its high dipole moment (6.12)
as confirmed by density functional theory (DFT) calculation, the surface
potential of the PBI nanofiber air filter, measured by KPFM, was higher
than that of other commercially available mask filters. The filter
developed in this work provides high PM filtering efficiency of ∼98.5%
at much reduced pressure drop (130 Pa) in comparison to those used
in commercially available masks (386 Pa) with similar filtering efficiencies.
Consequently, an approximately 3-fold higher quality factor (∼0.032),
evaluated for PM2.5, in comparison to that of commercial
ones (∼0.011) was achieved by using PBI nanofiber. Furthermore,
we developed a cleaning method effective for the filter contaminated
by both inorganic and organic PMs. Even after several cycles of cleaning,
the PBI filter membrane demonstrated negligible damage and retained
its original performance because of its mechanical, thermal, and chemical
durability.
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