Thermo-Responsive Gating Membranes: Design, Microstructures and Performances

Abstract

As there are many cases in which environmental temperature fluctuations occur naturally, and in which the environmental temperature stimuli can be easily designed and artificially controlled, much attention has recently focused on thermoresponsive smart membrane materials and systems. In this chapter, the emphasis is focused on the design, microstructures and performances of thermo-responsive gating membranes, which are also valuable for designing and fabricating other stimuli-responsive gating membranes. Firstly, the design of thermo-responsive gating membranes is introduced. Secondly, the formation and microstructures of grafted PNIPAM polymers in pore-filling type thermo-responsive gating membranes, fabricated by both plasma-induced grafting polymerization and atom-transfer radical polymerization, are discussed. Then, effects of the grafting yield, the length and density of grafted chains on thermo-responsive gating characteristics of pore-filling type PNIPAM-grafted membranes are discussed systematically. Next, the gating characteristics of thermo-responsive membranes with grafted linear and crosslinked PNIPAM gates and the thermo-responsive wettability characteristics of PNIPAM-grafted membranes are described. Finally, thermo-responsive gating membranes with controllable response temperature and membranes with negatively thermoresponsive gating characteristics are introduced.KeywordsWater FluxLower Critical Solution TemperatureHigh Operating PressurePNIPAM ChainNIPAM MonomerThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.