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

object translocated. Given the sensitivity of the membrane with respect to pressure (porosity changefrom 35 % to 5 %), each membrane was compressed to its maximum at the corresponding pressurebefore carrying out the translocation experiment. To achieve this, water was permeated through themembrane at the given pressure for 2 hours quickly followed by the introduction of nano-object feedsolution in the cell and switching of compressed air supply.3.2 NANO-OBJECTS AND THEIR PREPARATIONIn this work, we chose four classes of nano-objects to be translocated across the self-healingmembrane. The first being represented by Poly(ethylene glycol)s (PEG)s as the smallest objects in termsof dimensions and softest in terms of nature and highly hydrophilic. A mixture of 3 PEGs (100 KDa, 200KDa and 300 KDa) was prepared with a final concentration of 0.75 g.l -1 . This feed solution was analyzedby passing through a gel permeation chromatography column equipped with refractive index detector.The chromatogram of the feed solution (Figure – 3.2) was obtained in order to compare with retentatesand permeates solution obtained after the translocation experiments. As it can be seen that the columnwas not able to resolve the peaks perfectly however this not important due to the fact that in thisparticular part of the experiment, the GPC chromatograms have been used only for qualitative analysisrather than quantitative.Normalized Response1,81,61,41,210,80,60,40,205 7 9 11 13 15 17 19Time (min)Figure – 3.2: Chromatogram obtained for the feed solution of mixture of PEGs using Gel PermeationChromatography77