Benzophenone bp

Vinyl benzene chloride (VBC) and 2-(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate (DMAEMA) were used as monomers for preparing the AEMs, p-xylylene dichloride (XDC) and divinylbenzene (DVB) as a cross-linking agent, and benzophenone (BP) as a photoinitiator, and all were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich (St. Louis, MO, USA). Moreover, 1-allyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide (Im-TFSI, Kanto Chemical Co., INC., Tokyo, Japan) was chosen and used as a monomer containing an ion-exchange group. All reagents were used without any purification. A porous PE film (Hipore, thickness = 25 μm, Asahi Kasei E-materials Corp., Tokyo, Japan) was used as a support for fabricating the reinforced AEMs. In addition, as a commercial membrane for the performance comparison, Neosepta AMX (Astom Corp., Tokyo, Japan) was selected and employed.

Polysulfone (PSf, MW 60 kg/mol) in powder form as membrane material was purchased from BASF (Ludwigshafen, Germany). Polyacrylonitrile (PAN) in powder form as membrane material was kindly provided by R&D membrane center from Chung Yuan Christian university, Taiwan [31 (link)]. N, N-dimethylformamide (DMF), methanol (ACS grade), Tris (hydroxymethyl) aminomethane (Tris, biotechnology grade), and sulfuric acid (ACS grade) were purchased from VWR (Radnor, PA, USA). glycidyl methacrylate (GMA), sodium phosphate dibasic (Reagent Plus, ≥99.0%), sodium phosphate monobasic monohydrate and benzophenone (BP) were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich (St. Louis, MO, USA). Inhibitors in GMA were removed through a pre-packed inhibitor remover column (Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO, USA) prior to use. 1-Butanol (>99% ACS grade) and diethylamine (DEA, reagent grade 99%) were purchased from Alfa Aesar (Ward Hill, MA, USA). Bovine serum albumin (BSA) were acquired from Lee BioSolution (Maryland Heights, MO, USA). All chemicals were used without further purifications except GMA. Deionized water (DI) was obtained from Milli-Q ultrapure water purification system (Millipore, Billerica, MA, USA).

The amount of 12.0 ± 0.5 mg (per 1 mL of PVP solution) of crosslinking agent: benzophenone (BP) (Sigma Aldrich) was dispersed in 10 µL of ethanol (≥99.5%). Such highly concentrated BP ethanol solution was carefully placed inside the aqueous 17% w/w PVP solution at 50°C to obtain final BP concentration of 2% w/w (PVP-BP). This mixture was left for 30 min at 50°C under vigorous magnetic stirring to disperse the BP molecules homogenously. Such prepared solutions were cooled down to room temperature prior to electrospinning. The same parameters (height, humidity, RT, flow rate and voltage) as above were used for electrospinning of PVP-BP. To crosslink the BP molecules within the produced fibres, produced mats were irradiated with a UV light (λ = 365 nm), for 3, 5 or 10 h in air.