Effect of amine and acid functionalization on polyimide: A structure-property relationship study

The poly(imide) (PI) based membrane plays a vital role in water purification field. Due to the absence of hy-drophilic group and charged species, the PI membrane is easily attacked by water living microbial systems. This problem can be solved by the introduction of some ionic species onto PI backbone. Chemical grafting of chloroethylamine (CEA) and chloroaceticacid (CAA) onto PI was done in a single and two step processes in the presence of AlCl3 as a Friedel-Crafts (FC) catalyst. Thus functionalized PI was characterized by FT-IR, H-1 NMR, DSC, TGA, SEM, WCA, EDX, XPS, XRD and POM. The antibacterial and antifungus properties of PI4 system were tested. The FT-IR spectrum showed a small peak at 1623 cm(-1) due to the zwitter ionic structure. The surface morphology was slightly changed while changing the grafting agent. The simultaneous grafting of CEA and CAA onto PI yielded better results. The thermal stability of PI before and after functionalization was compared with the recent literature reports.