Fabrication of polyethylene nanofibrous membranes by biaxial stretching
[Caixia Wan, Materials Today Communication]
In the laboratory, under the guidance of Li Liangbin, Dr. Meng Lingpu and Ph.D. student Wan Caixia used a laboratory-made large scientific device, a film biaxial stretching device, to prepare polyethylene films with different transverse and longitudinal stretch ratios. The relationship between the stretch ratio and the final pore properties of the film was published in the journal Materials Today Communication (2018, 17: 24-30).
By sequential biaxial stretching process, we obtained a variant of PE nanofibrous membranes. The diameters of fibrils in the membranes are in the range of 30–40 nm and the mean pore sizes are between 19 nm and 26 nm. Surprisingly, the mechanical properties i.e. Young’s modulus and tensile strength, are about 10 times that of conventional electrospun ones, greatly expanding the application. The separation results exhibit that the membranes can reject the molecules with molecular weight larger than 100 kDa efficiently. The as prepared membranes may have potential in microfiltration applications.
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51703218 and 51633009), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2017M612087), Anhui Provincial Science and Technology Major Projects (No. 16030901044).
The relationship between process, structure and properties of PE nanofibrous membranes
