Abstract:
Air pollution has become a pressing global environmental problem, especially the public health hazards of fine particulate matter (PMs), which seriously affects the function of the respiratory and cardiovascular systems. With the increasing level of air pollution, the limitations of traditional air filtration membranes in terms of their protective effects have gradually emerged, especially when wearing a filtration mask for a long period of time, the accumulation of exhaled water vapor and sweat cannot be discharged in a timely manner, resulting in high humidity on the membrane surface, which further affects the comfort and filtration efficiency of the filtration membrane. Therefore, the development of a filtration fibrous membrane with high efficiency and low resistance and excellent constant moisture conductivity is particularly critical. Here, we prepared the hydrophilic layer by the electrospinning-electrospraying technique, in which hydrophilic SiO
2 was first doped into poly(lactic acid) (PLA) solution for electrostatic spinning, and a SiO
2@PLA-CZ NFM hydrophilic layer was obtained by depositing highly electroactive CNT@ZIF-8 nanohybrids (ZIF-8 grown in situ on the surface of carbon nanotubes) on the fibrous surface using the electrospraying technique simultaneously. Subsequently, a PLA hydrophobic fibrous membrane with groove structure was prepared on the hydrophilic layer by regulating the electrospinning parameters, forming a personal humidity management PLA fibrous membrane (PHM-PLA FM) with “hydrophilic-hydrophobic” wetting gradient and “dense-loose” pore size gradient. The resulting PHM-PLA FM exhibit excellent unidirectional water transport (transport index of 512.7 %) and fast water evaporation (72.4 g/m
2/h), and the PHM-PLA FMs show excellent air permeability (183.7 mm/s). In addition, thanks to the multilayer structure and the synergistic effect of electroactive nanoparticles, the PHM-PLA fibrous membrane achieved a filtration efficiency of 97.2 % for PM
0.3 particles at a flow rate of 32 L/min, while maintaining a low pressure drop (45.3 Pa). In conclusion, this PHM-PLA fibrous membrane with constant moisture conductivity and high efficiency and low resistance to PMs filtration provides a new way to develop high comfort protective equipment.