4(%3)3 - Ecole nationale supérieure de chimie de Montpellier

Figure – 3.24: Scanning Electron Microscopy image of a membrane with the aftereffects of high concentration ofsilica SP2 NPs.3.4 CONCLUSIONIn this work, we utilized the pressure sensitive variable porosity and self-healing ability of asynthetic membrane mimicking biological membranes to perform the translocation of four differenttypes of nano-objects. Despite lowest hydyrodynamic size, PEG chains were able not to translocate themembrane due to their random coil conformations in solution form. The dynamic nature of themembrane enabled the direct penetration mode translocation of protein molecules, polystyrene & silicaNPs having much larger diameters as compared to pore size flawlessly without damaging the membrane.However each nano-object showed different translocation characteristics. The BSA protein passedthrough easily at all pressures without any fouling of the membrane until very high concentration value,where due to cake formation made the membrane completely impermeable. In case of poly(styrene)NPs, the translocation was readily visible and strongly dependent upon the concentration of NPs and theapplied pressure. As a perspective, translocation with bigger size NPs can also be carried out to obtainthe maximum cut-off size. In case of silica NPs, the distribution curves from PCCS remained inconclusiveregarding the population distribution however an approximation could be obtained from the kcps values98