Fabrication of Block Copolymer Membranes via SNIPS Process

Abstract

In this work, we fabricated PS-b-P4VP block copolymer membranes from self-assembly and non-solvent induced phase separation (SNIPS), which combines the block copolymer self-assembly and conventional NIPS process. While previous studies mostly focused on the fabrication of well-defined structures, we systematically examined various processing parameters such as polymer concentration, solvent evaporation duration, solvent composition, and humidity, to optimized the membrane structures. As a result, the morphology of PS-b-P4VP membranes was optimized at a certain polymer concentration in solution and composition of volatile solvent at low humidity conditions, resulting in SNIPS separation membranes with well-defined nanopores on the surface, 75% of membrane porosity, and 18% of surface porosity.