Multiple Morphology Control of Biomacromolecule Crystallization Via Hydrogel Composite Membrane Based Platform

Multiple morphology control of biomacromolecule crystallization via hydrogel composite membrane based platform

Lin Wang, Gaohong He, Xiaobin Jiang*

State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals, Research and Development Center of Membrane Science and Technology, School of Chemical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, P. R. China

*Corresponding author: Email: xbjiang@dlut.edu.cn

Abstract

Membrane crystallization (MCr) is an innovative technology in chemical engineering and membrane science, which has been widely applied in seawater desalination, wastewater treatment and pharmaceutical production, due to its advantages on simple equipment, convenient operation, low energy consumption,etc [1,2,3]. Membrane in MCr process not only act as a selective barrier, but also act as the interface to accelerating the heterogeneous nucleation. It is significant for controllable biomacromolecules crystal growth [4,5]. While, the modification and optimization of the membrane interface is still a challenging and promising research. In recent years, some research indicate that hydrogel composite membranes (HCMs) have a great influence on promoting the biomacromolecules crystallization [6,7].

In this study, the HCMs with fingerprint-like interface structure (fabricated by functional monomer and crosslinker through UV initiation) is prepared and applied in lysozyme MCr process. The HCMs prepared by this method possess abundant biomimetic-structure on the surface and the cross-section under different water content and crosslinking degree (shown in Fig. 1), which provide the potential regulable ability to the heterogeneous nucleation acceleration and crystal growth control.

As a results, compared with original PP membrane, the HCMs have a remarkable role on regulating the proportion of the various crystal shapes and promoting the new crystal shapes under different pH value of buffer solution. The hexagon and square shape crystal only observed in HCMs-involved process. The proportion of hexagon and square crystal are 16.0 %, 13.6 % in the pH=3.6 buffer solution (shown in Fig. 1). In addition, in the pH=4.6 buffer solution, no rodlike or long hexagon crystals are observed, the obtained crystals in HCMs platform are all hexagon and square shape, which are account for 22.3 %, 77.7 % (shown in Fig. 2), respectively.

Fig. 1 Comparison of the structure of original PP membrane and HCMs, crystal morphology control results in the pH=3.6 buffer solution.

Fig. 2 Crystal morphology control results of original PP membrane and HCMs in the pH=4.6 buffer solution.

Acknowledgment

We acknowledge financial contribution from from National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 21527812, 21676043, U1663223), Changjiang Scholars Program (T2012049), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (DUT16TD19) and Education Department of the Liaoning Province of China (No. LT2015007).

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