Comparative Study of Swelling Behavior and Contact Angle of Amidoximated Polyacrylonitrile Membranes

Abstract

Membranes of amidoximated polyacrylonitrile swells in water. Treatment of water through membrane technology is a most common method being used now a days. However physiochemical treatments have their own importance in water quality analyses¹. The microbial infection of water, leads millions of people die worldwide every year causes great concern. Copolymerization of acrylonitrile (AN) and acrylic acid (AA) were performed at 65° C under nitrogen gas environment. Prepared membranes were fabricated into DMP. During amidoximation process, a part of nitrile groups of copolymer is converted into amidoxime groups. FTIR spectroscopy is used to confirm the copolymerization of poly (AN-co-AA) and chemical modification of poly² (AN-coAA). Surface characterization of amidoximated acrylic copolymer membrane is done by contact angle (CA) and swelling behavior. Water CA measures surface hydrophilicity by measuring how much a droplet of water spreads on the surface and swelling behavior. The amidoximated copolymers were confirmed to be more hydrophilic than the virgin membrane. Characterized has also done by various techniques such as FTIR, XRD, TGA, SEM, DSC, EDX etc^3,4. In this paper comparative study of swelling behavior and contact angle of virgin as well as amidoximated copolymer is done.