Morphological Effect of Dispersed Phase on Gas Separation Properties through Heterophase Polymer Membrane: Theoretical and Experimental Approaches.

Heterophase polymer system has been attractive for a potential applicability to gas separation membrane material. It has been known that there is a trade-off between gas permeability and its selectivity in common polymers. Therefore, the heterophase polymer can be an alternative for a gas separation membrane material because its transport properties can be readily controlled by blending of two different polymers. The transport properties of immiscible polymer blends strongly depend upon the intrinsic transport properties of corresponding polymers. Another important factor to determine the transport properties is their morphology: volume fraction, size and shape of dispersed phase. Although the effect of the volume fraction of the dispersed phase on the transport properties has been widely investigated, the size and shape effects have been paid attention very much. In an immiscible polymer blend of two polymers, its morphology is primarily controlled by its volume fraction of dispersed phase. Therefore, the effect of the size of the dispersed phase can be hardly seen. Therefore, a block copolymer has been commonly employed to control their morphology when each block is miscible with one or the other phase. In this work, gas transport properties will be measured by varying the morphology of the heterophase polymer membrane. The transport properties will be interpreted in terms of their morphology. The effect of the volume fraction of the PI phase and, in particular, its size effect will be investigated experimentally and theoretically.