An EVOH nanofibrous sterile membrane with a robust and antifouling surface for high-performance sterile filtration glutaraldehyde crosslinking and a plasma-assisted process

• Published in: Soft matter 2022-07, Vol.18 (26), p.4991-5
• Main Authors: Cheng, Pan, Huang, Peng, Ji, Cancan, Jia, Xiaodan, Guo, Qihao, Xia, Ming, Cheng, Qin, Xu, Jia, Liu, Ke, Wang, Dong
• Format: Article
• ISSN: 1744-683X; 1744-6848
• DOI: 10.1039/d2sm00578f

Constructing a sterile membrane with a robust and antifouling surface is a powerful means to improve the sterile filtration efficiency of sterile membranes. In this work, a robust EVOH nanofibrous sterile membrane was facilely fabricated by the method of in situ crosslinking with glutaraldehyde and surface plasma treatment. The resultant EVOH nanofibrous sterile membrane possessed a carboxylated-crosslinked surface, with high hydrophilicity, which generated high chemical stability, high-temperature steam resistance, and an ultrahigh antifouling performance against bovine serum albumin, ribonucleic acid and nanoparticle pollutants. Moreover, the membrane also exhibited a reasonably high primary water permeance (4522.2 LMH bar −1 at 0.2 MPa), as well as an absolute interception rate (100%) of Escherichia coli , Staphylococcus aureus cells and Brevundimonas diminuta superior to the state-of-the-art sterile membrane. Moreover, the modified membrane packed syringe-driven filter presented 100% interception (LRV ≥ 7) to Brevundimonas diminuta and high permeation flux (from 10.8 to 41.8 L·h −1 ) in a wide operating pressure range of 0.1 MPa to 0.6 MPa, indicating its potential in real bio-separation applications. This work provides a facile strategy for the preparation of a high-performance sterile membrane for biological drug product sterilization. A strategy based on in situ crosslinking and surface plasma treatment was developed to fabricate an EVOH nanofibrous sterile membrane with a robust and antifouling surface for high-performance sterile filtration.