Title
Probing the Internal Microstructure of Polyamide Thin-Film Composite Membranes Using Resonant Soft X-ray Scattering
Date Issued
21 August 2018
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Culp T.E.
Ye D.
Paul M.
Roy A.
Behr M.J.
Jons S.
Rosenberg S.
Wang C.
Gomez E.W.
Kumar M.
Pennsylvania State University
Publisher(s)
American Chemical Society
Abstract
Characterization of the internal morphology of thin film composite membranes used in reverse osmosis (RO) is a prerequisite for understanding the connection between microstructure and water transport properties and is necessary for the design of membranes with improved performance. Here, we examine a series of fully aromatic polyamide active layers of RO membranes that vary in crosslinking using a combination of resonant soft X-ray scattering (RSoXS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and atomic force microscopy (AFM). Analysis of RSoXS profiles reveals a correlation between membrane structure and crosslinking density. Through a combination of scattering contrast calculations, TEM, and AFM micrographs, we assign the dominant contribution to RSoXS data as either surface roughness or chemical heterogeneity, depending on the X-ray energy used. Altogether, our results demonstrate the utility of soft X-ray scattering to examine the microstructure of water filtration membranes.
Start page
927
End page
932
Volume
7
Issue
8
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Ciencia de los polímeros
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85052158220
PubMed ID
Source
ACS Macro Letters
Resource of which it is part
ACS Macro Letters
Source funding
Dow Chemical Company
Sponsor(s)
Financial support from The Dow Chemical Company under Agreement No. 225559AK/177526 is gratefully acknowledged. D.Y. acknowledges partial support from the Advanced Light Source Doctoral Fellowship in Residence. The authors thank Tawanda Zimudzi for help with FTIR experiments. The authors also thank the staff at the Materials Characterization Laboratory of the Pennsylvania State University for generous support and assistance with TEM experiments. The Advanced Light Source is supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the United States Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231.
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus