A zwitterionic polymer/PES membrane for enhanced antifouling performance and promoting hemocompatibility

Although zwitterionic polymers exhibit outstanding non-fouling property and biocompatibility, their poor solubility in organic solvents limits their practical applications. In this work, an amphiphilic zwitterionic polymer whose core is made of PES matrix was designed via addition and quaternization, which exhibited excellent solubility in various organic solvents and good compatibility with PES. Its incorporation into the PES matrix by direct blending endowed the resulting membrane with excellent hydrophilicity and high water flux (243.4 L m−2 h−1), which was amplified about 2 times that of the pure PES membrane (125.0 L m−2 h−1), and the flux recover ratio was as high as 93.8%. Especially, the hemocompatibility of membranes determined by the protein adsorption, platelet adhesion, hemolysis ratio, plasma recalcification time, complement activation and whole blood clotting time tests confirmed that the PES/PES-zwitterionic membrane possessed excellent anticoagulation effect, mainly due to the gathering of zwitterions on membrane surface. Meanwhile, the low surface roughness of membrane also played an important role in hemocompatibility. The mutiphysical-chemical properties of the membrane allow it to function with synergy between permeability and hemocompatibility for further blood purification applications. We expect this methodology for construction of an enhanced and promoted hemocompatibility by chemical design will shed light on the material design. And this facile approach may have great potential in fabrication of blood purification membrane in large scale.