Polyimide-TiO2 nanocomposites and their corresponding membranes: Synthesis, characterization, and gas separation applications

Abstract

In this work at firstly a new class of polyimide/TiO2 (PI/TiO2) composites containing amino acid (Methionine) and benzimidazole fractions in the structure with chemical bonds between the polyimide and TiO2 network has been synthesized by the sol-gel reaction and characterized and then secondly carbon (C) membranes were prepared by carbonization of PI/TiO2 at different temperatures under vacuum and nitrogen flow. Carbonization temperature was critical in the modification of membrane structure. At the same temperature, the carbon membranes fabricated under nitrogen atmosphere had higher gas permeations than those fabricated under vacuum. With the introduction of the TiO2, there was no significant enhancement of the gas separation in the resulting PI/TiO2 composite membranes over the PI membrane, which still suffered a ‘‘trade-off’’ relationship between permeability and selectivity. However, the derived C/PI/TiO2 composite membranes exhibited better gas separation properties. The C/PI/TiO2 15% composite membrane produced the highest permeations of 650.47, 520.56, 187.92 and 115.22 GPU for He, CO2, O2 and N2, respectively. The bionanocomposites were analyzed for antibacterial activity against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. The results indicated that the synthesized bionanocomposites is effective against all of the studied bacteria, and its effectiveness is higher for Pseudomonas aeruginosa.