RSC Advances
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commercial products such as PVDF, PES and so on, we will
improve its water ux property next. Interestingly, we found that
the ux of PASS-1 and PASS-2 became more large than that of
untreated samples (PASS-1O: 1.06–2.52 L mꢁ2, PASS-2O: 1.25–
3.56 L mꢁ2) aer oxidation treatment. Whereas the retention
rate (bovine serum albumin) decreased a little in a reasonable
range as shown in Fig. 11. In order to investigate this
phenomenon, the SEM and AFM was carried to observe the
section and surface of the membranes. As shown in Fig. 12, the
oxidized and un-oxidized membranes exhibited similar asym-
metric structure: a dense top layer, a porous nger-like and
sponge-like sub layer. From the AFM images (Fig. 13), we found
that the microporous on the oxidized membranes surface
became much more obvious than that of un-oxidized samples.
The main reason is that the polymer chain is tend to appear
local order structure with the oxidation treatment as demon-
strated in Fig. 9. The surface of the membrane begun to shrink,
then the microporous structure got more and more clear. We
also further studied the changes of ux and retention rate
before and aer oxidization with the contact angle experiment.
As shown in Fig. 14, the contact angle became smaller with the
oxidation treatment. It suggested the hydrophilicity of the
membrane got better aer oxidation treatment. And that was
benecial for the contamination resistance of the membranes.
It could be concluded that both the surface structure and
hydrophilicity of the membrane before and aer oxidation
affected the ux and retention rate results.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by research grants from the Youth
Fund Natural Science Foundation of China (21304060) and
Youth Fund of Sichuan University (2012SCU11009).
23200 | RSC Adv., 2014, 4, 23191–23201
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