Photo-Induced 3-D Porous Polymeric Membranes For Different Applications

Porous polymers have numerous applications in the fields of biomaterials,separation membrane,special coatings and so on.Even though there are several methods to prepare the porous polymer membrane,still there is a quest to development novel methods to make the porous polymer structure to meet the demands for multifunctional applications.Porous polymer membranes produced by the cryogel method are promising materials for tissue engineering applications.However,toxic crosslinker usage for retention of pore structure limits application in the clinical field.A facile method to produce highly interconnected super porous polymer membrane without using additional crosslinker is presented.Low temperature solid state photopolymerization method is used to produce a porous membrane with good structural retention.This research work is essentially comprised on three major projects that includes the fabrication of membrane material with specific design of morphology and shape geometry,characterized and used for different application.1.In first project two different photo curing sources(UV-LED and UV-Hg)were used to fabricate the cryogel membrane at-70?.The polymerization behavior and efficiency of curing sources were cheeked by characterizing the membrane samples with SEM,UV-Vis,TGA and water intake test.The results indicated that the cryogel membrane formed with UV-LED have better properties than UV-Hg light cured samples.2.In the second project of current work,three acrylates were used on the basis of their biomedical application to fabricate the cryogel scaffold for the application of tissue engineering.The morphology,pore diameter,water absorption of the membrane was characterized by SEM and water absorption test respectively.The elemental analysis and cytotoxicity of the Bio-mineralized membrane were identified using XRD and MTT assay test.The PEGDA membrane showed good water absorption ability and a higher degree of porosity with larger pore size as compared to HEA/PEGDA and HEMA/PEGDA respectively.Better Ca-P deposition rate was observed,on the surface and inside the pores of all membranes.XRD patterns confirmed the formation of Hydroxyapatite crystals from alternative mineralization process.The overall cell proliferation was excellent,where PEGDA based membrane has highest and uniform cell growth,while HEMA/PEGDA membrane showed least.The results suggest that cell proliferation and adhesion is directly proportional to pore size,shape and percent porosity of the membrane.3.In third study,porous polymer membranes which were fabricated by low temperature solid state photopolymerization were used as a templet to produce silicon based porous inorganic hydrophobic membrane for oil/water separation.Three different compositions HEA/PEGDA(A),HEMA/PEGDA(B)and PEGDA(C)to form organic templet.The composite polymer membrane was prepared by using TOES as silica source on porous polymer template through chemical vapor deposition method(CVD).The self-supporting interconnected porous inorganic membrane was obtained by calcination at 900 ?.Physico-chemical properties of the organic,composite and inorganic membrane were characterized by SEM,EDS,WCA,water uptake and percentage of porosity.The polymer and composite membranes were found to be hydrophilic,while inorganic was hydrophobic.