Light‐Permeable Air Filter with Self‐Polarized Nylon‐11 Nanofibers for Enhanced Trapping of Particulate Matters

Abstract

AbstractRecently, there is a growing demand of high‐performance, lightweight, and light‐permeable air filters due to severe air pollution. Nanofiber air filters have been actively investigated to filter out ultrafine particulate matters (PMs) in air. Among various polymer nanofibers, Nylon‐6 nanofibers have been widely adopted to fabricate air filters owing to their mechanical strength and chemical stability. However, the filtering efficiency of the Nylon‐6 air filter is relatively low when it has high light transmittance. Thus, a relatively thick nanofiber layer is required to ensure the filtering efficiency, leading to a high pressure drop and low light transmittance. Herein, the fabrication and performance of an air filter made of ferroelectric Nylon‐11 nanofibers is introduced. The air filters fabricated with ferroelectric Nylon‐11 demonstrate much improved PM filtering efficiency due to their spontaneous polarization. Specifically, for inorganic PMs, a higher filtration efficiency of ≈70% is obtained for trapping PM2.5 using the filter with 80% light transmittance, which is ≈20% higher compared to that of the Nylon‐6 air filter with the same light transmittance. Particularly, the Nylon‐11 air filter exhibits higher quality factors for both organic and inorganic PMs owing to its high filtering efficiency and breathability. The approach introduced herein is a simple route for fabricating high‐performance air filters.