Fabrication of Nanostructured Polymeric Membranes with Tunable Morphology

NATALIA CASÍS; DIANA ESTENOZ; MARIA MARTA FIDALGO DE CORTALEZZI

San José de Costa Rica

Congreso; XII Simposio Latinoamericano de Polímeros y Congreso Iberoamericano de Polímeros, SLAP 2010; 2010

Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica

Porous materials, in particular porous membranes, have generated immense interest in the last years due to a broad range of applications including photonic band gap materials, solid electrolytes, advanced filters in membrane technology, and in biological sciences. Much attention has been devoted to developing new fabrication processes and novel porous materials for these applications. Membrane performance depends to a great extent on the size of the pores, the width of the pore size distribution, and in general, of the overall membrane structure. Methods that allow a detailed control of these parameters at the nanometric scale are therefore highly desirable. In this work, polymeric porous membranes were fabricated from templates made from silica particles. The polymer employed was the diethyleneglycol dimethacrylate (DEGDMA)/urethane dimethacrylate (UDMA) copolymer.