Surface Pattern On Ultrafiltration Membrane Using Nanoimprinting Lithography

Fouling is widely regarded as the bottleneck in membrane separation process. To address the fouling issues, different sort of pretreatments and cleaning protocols are being developed and followed in the process industry which rarely can avoid fouling resulting in huge energy consumption and sometime shutdown of the productivity and eventually replacement of the membrane in the system. Among different types of techniques surface patterning has proven effective for fouling reduction in non-membrane applications. Surface topography has also been reported to control the attachment and growth of biological cell, which are common foulants in membrane processes. Recently, we have demonstrated a way to create sub-micron surface patterns directly on commercial ultrafiltration membrane using nanoimprint lithography technique (Figure1). Studies revealed that the presence of the sub-micron surface patterns can reduce fouling of the colloidal particles. To best of our knowledge this study represents the first report describing the influence of submicron surface patterns on pressure-driven liquid membrane separations. In this study, we represent the systematic study of effect of surface pattern on different types of foulants. Also the effect of imprinting parameters on in the structure, MWCO and physic-mechanical properties of the membrane when they undergo plastic deformation during imprinting process are presented in this study.