Membrane Functionalization with Hyperbranched Polymers

• Main Authors: Agnes Schulze, Marco Went, Andrea Prager
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2016-08-01
• Series: Materials
• Subjects: polymer membranes; hyperbranched polymers; surface functionalization; zeta potential; protein adsorption
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/1996-1944/9/8/706

Polymer membranes have been modified with hyperbranched polymers with the aim to generate a high density of hydrophilic functional groups at the membrane surface. For this purpose hyperbranched polymers containing amino, alcohol, and carboxylic acid end groups were used for membrane modification, respectively. Thus, surface potential and charges were changed significantly to result in attractive or repulsive interactions towards three different proteins (albumin, lysozyme, myoglobin) that were used to indicate membrane fouling properties. Our studies demonstrated that hydrophilization alone is not effective for avoiding membrane fouling when charged proteins are present. In contrast, electrostatic repulsion seems to be a general key factor.