Electrospun polyvinylidene fluoride/SiO2 nanofibrous membranes with enhanced electret property for efficient air filtration

Abstract There is a critical need for air filters with the abilities of removing particles effectively and allowing air to pass through easily to protect the public from increasingly serious air pollution; however, creating such a filter medium has proven to be extremely challenging. Herein, an air filtration material equipped with remarkable electrostatic effect is fabricated by electrospining polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) as the matrix polymer and silicon dioxide nanoparticles (SiO 2 NPs) modified by γ-glycidoxypropyl trimethoxysilane (GPS) as the charge enhancer. The premise of the design is that GPS modified SiO2 NPs can be uniformly distributed in PVDF fibers, generating abundant stable interfacial charges. Benefiting from the monodisperse state of GPS@SiO2 NPs, the resultant PVDF/GPS@SiO2 nanofibrous membrane exhibits remarkable electret effect with a surface potential of 12.4 kV and high filtration performance with a quality factor of 0.14, which has never been reported before. We envision that this work can provide new insight into the design and development of electret air filter media for various applications.