Polymer grafted films porous substrates

In recent years, many kinds of temperature-responsive PNIPAAm and its copolymer hydrogels with other acrylic monomers have been synthesized [142]. Besides being used for hydrogels, NIPAAm monomer can be grafted on to polymer substrates by electron beam, irradiation or UV-initiated graft polymerization to achieve special modification of polymer surfaces. Thus NIPAAm has been grafted on porous polymer films such as LDPE, PP, or polyamide films in order to prepare novel films for pervaporation of liquid mixtures or separation membranes [150,151]. 

Microporous polyethylene (PE) membranes with various pore diameters and porosities and microporous polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) membrane were used as substrates for the plasma graft polymerization (Table II). Besides these porous substrates, homogeneous poly[ l-(trimethyl si lyl)-l-propyne] (PTMSP), which has the highest gas permeability among polymeric materials, was used as the substrate. The poly[l-(trimethylsilyl)-l-propyne] was synthesized from l-(trimethylsilyl)-l-propyne according to the literature procedure (19). Films were prepared by casting polymers from toluene solutions. Hereafter, the respective substrate membranes will be abbreviated as shown in Table II. 

Polymers of MMA, AAc, and MAA were grafted onto an ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) fiber surface after pretreatment with electron beam irradiation [31]. Sundell et al. [32] pretreated a PE film with electron beams to facilitate the graft polymerization of vinyl benzylchloride onto the substrate. The inner surface of porous PE hollow fiber had also been modified by grafting of glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) polymer after electron beam irradiation [33]. 

PMMA- and poly(a-methyl-st)rrene)-PI block copolymer [9,10] blend solution containing polyurethane and PAA [11] and polyacrylamide- and PMMA-grafted PI [12]. They have achieved 10-30% decrease in a dielectric constant of polyimide films, and low-fc porous films ( fc 2.2) have been provided. Also, other methods, such as using water droplets and LiCl crystal as templates, and extracting a porogen polymer from composite PI film by supercritical CO2, have been known [47-49]. On the other hand, we have obtained ultralow-fc porous films by depositing porous PI MPs onto substrates [18,20]. 

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