Thermo- and pH-responsive polypropylene microporous membrane prepared by the photoinduced RAFT-mediated graft copolymerization

Manipulating membrane permeability and protein rejection of UV-modified polypropylene macroporous membrane

“…1, which is similar to [18]. Photosensitizer of BP was immobilized on the membrane surface under UV irradiation in the first step.…”

“…6 that DG3 increases with the reaction time. This result demonstrates that the grafted chain on the membrane surface having the RAFT agent moieties can be used as macro-CTA for the further block grafting polymerization [18]. …”

“…Surface morphologies of the unmodified and modified PPMMs were observed by field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM) with a Hitachi 4800 (Hitachi, Japan) operating with an accelerating voltage of 5 keV. The detailed description was similar in the literature [18].…”

“…6 demonstrates that the grafting chain containing RAFT moieties on the end can reinitiate the further block polymerization of HEA; whereas the grafting chain without the RAFT moieties on the end cannot reinitiate the polymerization, no weight gain can be observed. This control experiment had also been conducted in our previous work [18].…”

“…However, much work has been done to introduce the initiating sites by plasma treatment, ozone treatment and ␥-irradiation, followed by the controlled graft polymerization [14][15][16][17]. In our lab, surface modification of polypropylene membranes by the reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization combined with UV irradiation was conducted, and the block grafting chains with different functionalities were obtained, multi-stimulus membranes were thus acquired [18].…”