Preparation of Electro-Spun Polyaryl Sulfone/Nano Silica Composite Nanofibrous Membranes for Air Filtration

By adding hydrophobic gas phase nano silica (SiO2) into the spinning solutions, self-cleaning composite silica/polyaryl sulfone (SiO2/PASS) nanofibrous membranes were successfully prepared via electrospinning method. Field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) was employed to observe the morphologies of SiO2/PASS composite nanofibrous membranes with different contents of SiO2 and the energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS) and Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FT-IR) were also carried out. The results of FESEM, EDS and FT-IR show that nano SiO2 is on the surface of PASS utrafine fiber membranes and micro-nano hierarchical structure is formed. The mean pore size of the nanofibrous membranes was analyzed and the addition of nano SiO2 could increase the mean pore sizes of the nanofibrous membranes. The air filtration performance of the nanofibrous membranes was explored. The results show that the comprehensive filtration performance of the membranes could be improved by increasing the basis mass of the membranes properly. The 4-SiO2/PASS composite fibrous membrane with a base mass of 3.46 g/m2 has the best comprehensive filtration efficiency and its quality factor is as high as 0.03549 Pa-1. SiO2/PASS composite nanofiber membranes could have wide range of applications in the field of air filtration due to their highly efficient filtration and superhydrophobic properties. © 2020, Editorial Board of Polymer Materials Science & Engineering. All right reserved.