In Situ Polymerization of Sepiolite Modified Polysulfone

Abstract

AbstractPolysulfone (PSU) is an amorphous engineering polymer with extraordinary chemical, thermal and mechanical properties. These properties might be listed as thermal stability, mechanical strength, high rigidity, stiffness, excellent resistance to hydrolysis, and acids and bases, resistance to creep, oxidative resistance and an extensive operative range of temperature and pH. Owing to these properties, polysulfones are used in the fields of materials science, biology and polymer science and have been the basis of numerous applications.. Up to this point, PSU membranes are prepared for the applications such as filtration, hemodialysis, bioartificial organs, gas separation, water purification systems, and fuel cells, etc. Sepiolite is a natural clay mineral. It is a member of layered silicates, especially it is a magnesium hydrosilicate. Its unique properties of high surface area, fibrous structure, porosity, crystal morphology and composition, surface activity, production of stable suspensions of high viscosity at low concentrations leads to many applications. In this work, composites of PSU and sepiolite were prepared by in situ polymerization technique. Sepiolite was utilized as both raw material and enriched with minerals (Ag, Cu). Synthesized composites were characterized by FTIR, NMR and XRD measurements and they are going to be used as membrane fabrication.