Preparation, characterization and performance studies of polyethersulfone (PES) - pyrolytic carbon (PyC) composite membranes

Polyethersulfone (PES) is one of the most common polymers used to manufacture membranes. This work focuses on introducing and developing a novel polymer-based membrane applicable in the bio-artificial pancreas. The novel membrane based on the mixture of PES and Pyrolytic carbon (PyC) was studied and compared to PES as a reference. The PES/PyC blend membranes were characterized by top surface SEM, cross section SEM, AFM, contact angle pure water flux, insulin rejection, rejection of immune cells and molecules, and insulin diffusivity performance. In addition, the porosity of the membranes, mean pore size and mean pore density were also measured. The AFM and SEM images indicate that addition of synthesized PyC in the casting solution results in a membrane with high surface and sub-layer porosity and the addition 0.1 wt.% PyC to the casting solution reduced the surface roughness from 22.4 nm to 4.8 nm. The contact angle measurements reveal that the hydrophobicity of pure PES membrane enhanced with increasing the PyC concentration in the casting solution. With the increase of PyC from 0.0 wt.% to 0.1 wt.% in the casting solution, pure water flux reduces from 184 to 153 (L/m²h), insulin rejection reduces from 12 to 9.3%, rejection of immune cells and molecules reduce from 91.8 to 83% and insulin diffusivity increased from1.22E-8 to 1.46E-8. Furthermore, the resulting numbers for the mean pore size, mean pore density, and porosity of the PES-PyC(0.1 wt.%) membrane indicate a considerable improvement compared to pure PES membrane with increasing from 5.5 nm to 7 nm, 26 to 43 pores/area (area stand for the size of membrane surface in which pores were counted), and 68.3% to 84.6%, respectively. At the end, the statistical analysis was performed.