Although thin-film nanocomposite membranes (TFNs) have paved the way to develop high-performance reverse osmosis (RO) membranes, scale-up production of TFNs is still challenging issue. Herein, we introduced a novel preparation method for TFNs using spray-assisted nanofiller pre-deposition (Spray method) to circumvent the limitations in conventional method. The precise control of nanofiller (ZIF-8) loading was possible by simply varying the spraying ZIF-8 concentration. Most importantly, TFNs prepared by both Spray and conventional method showed similar RO performances, while Spray method only requires ~100 times minimized amount of ZIF-8 with an unprecedentedly short deposition time (< 1 min) ever reported. Our results revealed that Spray method would be promising for the scale-up of TFNs in terms of cost, time, and controllability.

Membrane fabrication is a critical area that hampers forward osmosis (FO) technology from industrialization. Herein, electrospun poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) nanofiber (NF) was used as a support layer for thin film composite (TFC) FO membrane. The PVA NF was incorporated with sulfonated graphene oxide (sGO). The oxygenous-rich sGO enhanced the hydrophilicity and mechanical strength of PVA NF as revealed by contact angle and tensile strength measurements, and pure water flux. On this support, the active polyamide layer was formed through interfacial polymerization. Meanwhile, FO performance of sGO/PVA TFC membrane is currently being evaluated. This work was supported by NRF of Korea funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (2016R1A2B1009221 and 2017R1A2B2002109) and Ministry of Education (2009-0093816 and 22A20130012051 (BK21Plus)).

본 논문은 절연유 불포함 재활용 가능 전력케이블 절연체에 동일배열 폴리프로필렌(IPP) 기반 열가소성 폴리올레핀 엘라스토머(TPO) 나노복합체 사용 가능성을 문헌적으로 고찰한 리뷰논문이다. 2010년 IPP 기반 나노복합 유전체는 파워 커패시터 연구에서 유전손실을 제외한 고전압 특성이 크게 향상되었다. IPP 기반 TPO 나노복합체 사용 자동차 외장부품 연구에서는 나노충전제 최대 3 wt% 함유로 전력케이블 절연체의 필수특성인 저온 충격성을 비롯한 기계적 특성향상이 보고 되었다. 특히 유전손실의 원천인 상용화제 사용의 최소화 기술이 보고되어, 3 wt% 이하 나노충전제 함유 IPP 기반 TPO의 전기적 특성조사가 필요하다.

This study investigates the effect of filler content (wt%), presence of interphase and agglomerates on the effective Young's modulus of polypropylene (PP) based nanocomposites reinforced with exfoliated graphite nanoplatelets (xGnPTM) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs). The Young's modulus of the composites is determined using tensile testing based on ASTM D638. The reinforcement/polymer interphase is characterized in terms of width and mechanical properties using atomic force microscopy which is also used to investigate the presence and size of agglomerates. It is found that the interphase has an average width of ~30 nm and modulus in the range of 5 to 12 GPa. The Halpin-Tsai micromechanical model is modified to account for the effect of interphase and filler agglomerates and the model predictions for the effective modulus of the composites are compared to the experimental data. The presented results highlight the need of considering various experimentally observed filler characteristics such as agglomerate size and aspect ratio and presence and properties of interphase in the micromechanical models in order to develop better design tools to fabricate multifunctional polymer nanocomposites with engineered properties.