A one-pot method for the preparation of mixed matrix polyvinylidene fluoride membranes with in situ synthesized and PEGylated polyethyleneimine particles

In this article, we report a one-pot method for the preparation of mixed matrix polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membranes with in situ synthesized and PEGylated polyethyleneimine (PEI) particles. The key feature of our new membrane preparation route is the in situ synthesis and PEGylation of PEI particles in the dope solutions prior to membrane casting using epichlorohydrin (ECH) and poly(ethylene glycol) diglycidyl ether (PEGDE) as crosslinker and PEGylating reagent, respectively. Using non-solvent induced phase separation (NIPS), we successfully prepared a new family of mixed matrix PVDF membranes with (i) average pore diameters of 16–24 nm, (ii) high loadings of PEGylated PEI particles (35–57 wt%) and (iii) uniform distributions of particles with average diameters ranging from 600 nm to 3.6 μm. Preliminary experiments show that our new mixed matrix PVDF membranes with in situ synthesized and PEGylated PEI particles can serve as fouling resistant ultrafiltration membranes for microalgae recovery from culture media of relevance to biofuel production.