A Smart Magnetic Responsive Microfiltration Membrane Based on Three-Dimensionally Inverse Colloidal Crystal

Abstract

In this article, a magnetic-responsive microfiltration membrane based on three-dimensional (3 D) inverse colloidal crystal (ICC) was prepared with relatively simple approach. We designed the ICC membrane using self-assembly of Fe₃O₄@SiO₂ colloidal crystal into a colloidal crystal template. The resulting close-packed colloidal crystal was infiltrated with a reactive monomer solution. After polymerization, the silica spheres were etched away, resulting in an ICC membrane with Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles inside. The typical ICC membrane was characterized by SEM and XRD. Meanwhile, We used the KCl diffusion to test the permeability of the membrane. The results illustrated that the highly ordered permeable polymer membrane was successfully prepared by using Fe₃O₄@SiO₂ colloidal crystals as the templates. Furthermore, the functional ICC membrane exhibited excellent magnetic-responsive gating property to separation. The smart environment-responsive gating membranes have potential applications in filtration, sensors and other applications.

Keywords:

• Magnetic-responsive microfiltration membrane
• inverse colloidal crystal
• Fe3O4@SiO2
• separation

Additional information

Funding

This work is financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21675091, 21874078), the Taishan Young Scholar Program of Shandong Province (tsqn20161027), the Key Research and Development Project of Shandong Province (2016GGX102028, 2016GGX102039, 2017GGX20111), the People’s Livelihood Science and Technology Project of Qingdao (173378nsh), the Innovation Leader Project of Qingdao (168325zhc), the Postdoctoral Scientific Research Foundation of Qingdao (2016003), the Postdoctoral Innovation Project of Shandong Province, and the First Class Discipline Project of Shandong Province.