Preparation of porous PVdF membrane via thermally induced phase separation using sulfolane

Sulfolane was acted as a kind of diluent to prepared PVdF porous membranes via TIPS process. Its impact on structure and morphology was studied. Phase diagram for this system was determined by different scanning calorimetry (DSC). Not any structure in the region higher than the dynamic crystallization temperature can be found and the temperature at which particle formation was observed by the optical microscope was approximately in agreement with the dynamic crystallization temperature, which revealed that only S-L phase separation happened for PVdF/sulfolane system during TIPS process. It was found that the heat of crystallization increased with the increase of polymer content. The increase of the cooling rate will increase the crystallization rate. SEM, which showed that membranes had symmetrical structure and pores formed between PVdF crystallization, revealed that PVdF will present different crystallization morphology as the cooling rate changed. With the cooling rate decrease, both the size of particles and the channel size of open pores between particles became larger, but more uneven. As the cooling rate increased, the size of particles decreased and pore became well interconnected and uniform, which were confirmed by the measurement of average pore size and pore size distribution. (c) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.