Superhydrophobic polydimethylsiloxane dip-coated polycaprolactone electrospun membrane for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is a technique that delivers gas exchange to cardiopulmonary surgery patients. Membrane oxygenation failure may result in serious health problems for patients due to ECMO membrane wetting and surface fouling problems. Thus, in this work, the superhydrophobic membrane is designed to improve the resistance to wetting and long-term fouling of the ECMO membrane. The hydrophobic biocompatible polycaprolactone (PCL) was used to fabricate an electrospun nanofiber membrane. Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) was dip-coated on the PCL electrospun membrane to enhance the membrane hydrophobicity, which lifts the water contact angle from 136 to 160°. The PDMS90 membrane shows low protein adsorption under 10 mg/mL BSA incubation, inhibiting the platelet activation and intensifying long-term antifouling of the membrane. The lab-scale blood oxygenation results indicate that the developed membrane is competitive with the commercial polypropylene (PP) and lab-made polymethyl pentene (PMP) membranes. In conclusion, the conducted experiments verify that the developed membrane has the potential to be applied to the ECMO membrane.