Superhydrophilic organosilicon plasma modification on PES membrane for organic dyes filtration

Abstract

Plasma-based surface modification is perceived as environmental friendly and green method because the absence of harmful solvent and capable of introducing diverse functional groups on the surface. In this paper, we propose a surface modification by plasma polymerization using organosilicon precursor tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) on PES membrane for the entrapment of water pollutants especially organic dye (Congo Red). The superhydrophilic surface was obtained by optimizing the plasma deposition process parameters with TEOS as a precursor and oxygen as the gas carrier to increase the amount of SiOSi functional groups. Subsequently, the chemical composition of the coatings was evaluated using Attenuated Total Reflectance Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR/ATR) spectroscopy and FESEM-EDX. As a result, we observed a significant improvement in terms of hydrophilicity, pure water flux, rejection, and anti-fouling properties on the modified membrane especially for the deposition of TEOS-O2 with 20 W compared to the untreated sample. The outcome from the proposed plasma modified membrane using organosilicon precursor could be useful to further improve the performance of the commercial filtration membrane especially for the removal of organic dye without changing its fabrication process.