Effects of plasma treatment on CO2 plasticization of poly(methyl methacrylate) gas‐separation membranes

To suppress undesirable plasticization effects of condensable gas (CO2) in high pressure gas-separation process, a surface-modified poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) membrane prepared by a plasma treatment was synthesized in this study. The pressure dependencies of permeability were analyzed to characterize the plasticization phenomenon and how it can be controlled by the plasma modification. FTIR-ATR and TGA results suggest that the plasma treatment leads to surface crosslinking of PMMA membrane. Thus, the plasticization effect resulting from sorbed CO2 on the Ar-plasma–treated PMMA membrane was significantly reduced, but the reduction in permeability was lower than that of other crosslinking modification methods. The reduction of the CO2 permeability contributes to a major part to the selectivity of He/CO2 for the Ar-plasma–treated PMMA membranes. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 93: 395–401, 2004

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