M
Membrane Preparation Techniques
Franco Tasselli
ITM, CNR, Rende, CS, Italy
Membrane technology is nowadays more and
more employed in many separation processes
such as water desalting and blood purification,
to mention two of the most known. Synthetic
membranes can be prepared according to several
techniques which allow to forge a material so as
to give it the desired characteristics, the most
important of which is the morphology (Mulder
1996; Baker 2004). In order to prepare mem-
branes for a given separation, two aspects must
be considered: the nature of the used material
(organic or inorganic) and the morphology
(dense or porous) of the membrane. In the table
below, the most important techniques are
reported together with salient features.
Sintering is a technique which allows to pre-
pare membranes from powders of polymeric
materials such as polyethylene (PE) and polypro-
pylene (PP) or of inorganic materials such as
stainless steel, metal oxides, graphite, or glass.
This technique is based on the compression of the
particles of the selected material and heating to a
temperature below the melting point so as to
induce a sticking of the particles. Between the
stuck particles, pores are formed the size of
which strictly depends on the particle size: the
smaller the particle size, the smaller the pore size.
# Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014
E. Droli, L. Giorno (eds.), Encyclopedia of Membranes,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-40872-4_1825-1
The SEM micrograph of a stainless steel sintered
membrane is shown in Table 1 (a). Sintered mem-
branes are particularly suitable for applications in
harsh conditions owing to the great resistance of
the based materials in chemically aggressive
environment or at high temperature. Polytetra-
fluoroethylene (PTFE), further to these outstand-
ing properties, also exhibits high flexibility which
makes it particularly suitable as membrane
material.
Stretching technique is used to prepare
porous membranes starting from extruded dense
films of semicrystalline polymers such as PE, PP,
and PTFE. Pore formation is obtained by
stretching the film perpendicularly to the direc-
tion of extrusion until small ruptures occur in the
structure of the dense film (SEM image (b) in
Table 1). Pore size of membranes prepared by
this technique (0.1–3 mm) makes them suitable
for microfiltration applications. The porosity of
the stretched membranes, given by the ratio of the
void volume and the total volume of the mem-
brane, may also reach 90 %.
Differently from all the others, membranes
prepared by track-etching technique present uni-
form pores with cylindrical geometry (SEM
image (c) in Table 1). The principle of the tech-
nique is the irradiation of a dense film of polymer,
usually polyester or polycarbonate. The radiation
crosses the film perpendicularly to the surface
and damages polymer chains encountered along
the path. A subsequent chemical treatment, typi-
cally with NaOH, removes the damaged material
2 Membrane Preparation Techniques

Membrane Preparation Techniques, Table 1 Membrane preparation techniques. SEM images (b), (c) and (d)
reprinted from “Membrane Technology and Applications” 2nd edn. by Richard W. Baker with permission from John
Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Field of Morphology (SEM
Techniques Materials Pore size (mm) applications image)
Sintering Powders of polymers, 0.1–10 Microfiltration
metals, ceramics, graphite

(a)
Stretching Semicrystalline polymers 0.1–3 Microfiltration

(b)
Track- Thermoplastic polymers 0.02–10 Ultrafiltration,
etching microfiltration

(c)
Phase Polymer solutions From dense to few All fields
inversion microns

(d)
Solution Polymer solutions Dense Nanofiltration/gas
coatings separation

(e)
Membrane Preparation Techniques
creating straight cylindrical pores. The number of
pores and their size is determined by the exposure
time to the radiation and to the etching treatment,
respectively. A drawback of this technique is the
rather low porosity of the membranes, ranging
from 5 % to 10 %.
Phase inversion. This is the most versatile
technique which allows the preparation of all
kinds of membranes. Only polymeric membranes
can be prepared, provided that the polymer is
soluble in a solvent. According to this technique,
a polymer dissolved in a solvent passes from the
fluid state to the solid state under controlled con-
ditions to give rise to the formation of mem-
branes. The control of the operating conditions
is crucial in order to prepare membranes with the
desired morphology. The rate of removal of the
solvent and the velocity of the phase separation
are the most important steps which mainly deter-
mine the morphology of the membranes. With
this technique it is possible to prepare membranes
both in flat and in tubular conformation with
morphology ranging from dense to microporous
(SEM image (d) in Table 1).
Solution coatings. This technique allows the
preparation of composite membranes, the use of
3
which is desirable when the separation to be
accomplished is controlled by the diffusion rather
than by the size of the species to be separated.
Membranes prepared with this technique are
formed by two different materials the first of
which is a thin dense film made of a selective
polymer deposited on top of the second one
which merely acts as a porous support. The
SEM image (e) in Table 1 shows the cross section
of a composite membrane. Such a conformation
increases the transport rate through the mem-
brane thanks to the thinness of the dense layer,
while the porous support ensures mechanical sta-
bility. Dip coating, spray coating, spin coating,
and plasma polymerization are some of the pro-
cedures for preparing composite membranes.
References
Baker RW (2004) Membrane technology and applica-
tions, 2nd edn. Wiley, Chichester
Mulder M (1996) Basic principles of membrane technol-
ogy. Kluwer Academic Publisher, Dordrecht