| Commercial gas separation membranes are typically polymeric because of low cost, processibility and wide range of available properties. However, while much work has been done to develop improved polymers for membranes, these materials have limitations for many applications. Therefore, much work has been focused in post-formation modification of polymer membrane. In this work, two very different polymers were modified by ion irradiation to evaluate the evolution in chemical structure, microstructure and permeation properties. A specific focus was on the impact of ion choice on properties of a specific polymer.; The first part of study focused on evolution in a typical commercial membrane polymer, polysulfone, following H+ irradiation. Ion irradiation of polysulfone resulted in significant evolution in chemical structure at intermediate H+ doses. There was a general decrease in permeance with little improvement in selectivity following irradiation. Modification of asymmetric polysulfone membranes by H+ and C- irradiation resulted in significant damage to the porous substrate of the membranes. Therefore, these membranes exhibited larger decreases in permeance then could be attributed to changes in the selective layer.; The polyimide, 6FDA-6FpDA, was irradiated with three different ions, (H+, N+ and F+) to investigate impact of ion mass and energy transfer mechanisms. As expected the polymer responded different to the different ions at similar overall doses and total energy transfer. In general, more damage to the polymer matrix was achieved with larger mass ions. The larger relative evolution to microstructure was attributed to the greater nuclear loss mechanism for N+ and F+ relative to H+. Significant evolution in permeation properties corresponded to this change in chemical structure and microstructure. While the ions exhibited similar trends in evolution in permeation properties, there were large differences in scale of modification. For example, at high dose H+ irradiation, the gas pair He/CH4 exhibited significant increase in both permeance and permselectivity. However, F+ irradiation at high doses exhibited drastic decreases in permeance for all gases. Several irradiated samples exhibited permeation properties that were beyond the trade-off curve for tradition polymers. Therefore, with additional research, ideal conditions may be selected to optimize the changes in permeation properties. |
