Surface hydrophilicity modification of PVDF membranes with an external electric field in the phase inversion process

To increase the surface hydrophilicity of PVDF membranes, in this paper, an electric enhancing method was adopted to treat PVDF nascent membranes during the phase inversion process. It was found that when PEG 600 was taken as the additive, the surface water contact angle of the PVDF membrane treated under 2 kV electric field was decreased from 84.0º to 65.7º. The reason for the surface elements change of the PVDF membranes prepared under the electric field was analyzed in detail with the dielectric parameters of the polymer dope solutions. Results from BSA adsorption experiment showed that the antifouling ability of the external electric field-treated membranes was distinctly enhanced when compared with that of the untreated membranes. The amount of BSA adsorbed by the treated membranes was lower by 38-43%. Compared with the common chemical reaction methods to synthesize hydrophilic additives or membrane materials, the electric field-assisted processing method did not involve any additional chemical synthesis process and it was capable of realizing better hydrophilicity.