Multifunctional hydrolyzed EVA membranes with tunable microstructure and water barrier properties

Biodegradation of renewable polyurethane foams in marine environments occurs through depolymerization by marine microorganisms

Accumulation of plastics in the Earth's oceans is causing widespread disruption to marine ecosystems. To help mitigate the environmental burden caused by non-degradable plastics, we have previously developed a commercially relevant polyurethane (PU) foam derived from renewable biological materials that can be depolymerized into its constituent monomers and consumed by microorganisms in soil or compost. Here we demonstrate that these same PU foams can be biodegraded by marine microorganisms in the ocean and by isolated marine microorganisms in an ex situ seawater environment. Using Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, we tracked molecular changes imparted by microbial breakdown of the PU polymers; and utilized scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to demonstrate the loss of physical structure associated with colonization of microorganisms on the PU foams. We subsequently enriched, isolated, and identified individual microorganisms, from six marine sites around San Diego, CA, that are capable of depolymerizing, metabolizing, and accumulating biomass using these PU foams as a sole carbon source. Analysis using SEM, FTIR, and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GCMS) confirmed that these microorganisms depolymerized the PU into its constitutive diols, diacids, and other PU fragments. SEM and FTIR results from isolated organismal biodegradation experiments exactly matched those from ex situ and ocean biodegradation samples, suggesting that these PU foam would undergo biodegradation in a natural ocean environment by enzymatic depolymerization of the PU foams and eventual uptake of the degradation products into biomass by marine microorganisms, should these foams unintentionally end up in the marine environment, as many plastics do.

PVC/EVA-based polymer inclusion membranes with improved stability and Cr(VI) extraction capacity: Water plasticization effect

Polymer inclusion membranes (PIMs) are far investigated for their ability to extract heavy metals and small organic compounds from aqueous media. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is one of the most widely used base polymers for the PIM elaboration. However, its use requires the incorporation of a relatively expensive liquid plasticizer. In the present work, poly(ethylene-co-vinyl acetate) (EVA) serves as a polymer plasticizer for the elaboration of PIMs based on PVC as a base polymer and Aliquat 336 as a carrier. The composition of PIMs was optimized in terms of the PVC/EVA ratio and the vinyl acetate (VA) groups content (x) of EVA (i.e. EVA_x). Physical-chemical properties of the resulting membranes are analyzed and correlated with their structure. The results of SEM analysis revealed miscible PVC/EVA₇₀ blends (i.e. with 70 wt% of VA groups) and partially miscible PVC/EVA₄₀ blends. The plasticizing effect of the EVA copolymer was confirmed by the tensile test results. The results of transport measurements showed that PIMs containing EVA₄₀ and PVC are more efficient for the Cr(VI) extraction than those with only PVC. Thus, EVA₄₀ can effectively replace the conventional liquid plasticizers while improving the Cr(VI) permeability. Besides, it is stated that EVA₄₀-based PIMs are more stable as compared with conventional PIMs due to the water plasticizing effect. After the membrane optimization, the highest Cr(VI) transport flux (54.7 µmol·m^-2·s^-1) was measured. Moreover, the addition of 10 wt% of tetradecanol causes the increase of the water plasticizing effect and allows obtaining a PIM with high stability (up to 24 cycles) required for the membrane long-term operation.

Asymmetric Mass Transport through Dense Heterogeneous Polymer Membranes: Fundamental Principles, Lessons from Nature, and Artificial Systems

Many organisms rely on directional water transport schemes for the purpose of water retention and collection. Directional transport of water and other fluids is also technologically relevant, for example to harvest water, in separation processes, packaging solutions, functional clothing, and many other applications. One strategy to promote mass transport along a preferential direction is to create compositionally asymmetric, multi-layered, or compositionally graded architectures. In recent years, the investigation of natural and artificial membranes based on this design has attracted growing interest and allowed researchers to develop a good understanding of how the properties of such membranes can be tailored to meet the demands of particular applications. Here a summary of theoretical works on mass transport through dense asymmetric membranes, comprehensive reviews of biological and artificial membranes featuring this design, and a discussion of applications, remaining questions, and opportunities are provided.

Comparative Analysis of Machine Learning Methods to Predict Growth of F. sporotrichioides and Production of T-2 and HT-2 Toxins in Treatments with Ethylene-Vinyl Alcohol Films Containing Pure Components of Essential Oils

The efficacy of ethylene-vinyl alcohol copolymer films (EVOH) incorporating the essential oil components cinnamaldehyde (CINHO), citral (CIT), isoeugenol (IEG), or linalool (LIN) to control growth rate (GR) and production of T-2 and HT-2 toxins by Fusarium sporotrichioides cultured on oat grains under different temperature (28, 20, and 15 °C) and water activity (a_w) (0.99 and 0.96) regimes was assayed. GR in controls/treatments usually increased with increasing temperature, regardless of a_w, but no significant differences concerning a_w were found. Toxin production decreased with increasing temperature. The effectiveness of films to control fungal GR and toxin production was as follows: EVOH-CIT > EVOH-CINHO > EVOH-IEG > EVOH-LIN. With few exceptions, effective doses of EVOH-CIT, EVOH-CINHO, and EVOH-IEG films to reduce/inhibit GR by 50%, 90%, and 100% (ED₅₀, ED₉₀, and ED₁₀₀) ranged from 515 to 3330 µg/culture in Petri dish (25 g oat grains) depending on film type, a_w, and temperature. ED₉₀ and ED₁₀₀ of EVOH-LIN were >3330 µg/fungal culture. The potential of several machine learning (ML) methods to predict F. sporotrichioides GR and T-2 and HT-2 toxin production under the assayed conditions was comparatively analyzed. XGBoost and random forest attained the best performance, support vector machine and neural network ranked third or fourth depending on the output, while multiple linear regression proved to be the worst.

Chemical Structure of EVA Films Obtained by Pulsed Electron Beam and Pulse Laser Ablation

Poly(ethylene-co-vinyl acetate) (EVA) films were deposited for the first time using physical methods. The chemical structure of the films obtained using two techniques, pulsed electron beam deposition (PED) and pulsed laser deposition (PLD), was studied by attenuated total reflection Fourier infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Whilst significant molecular degradation of the EVA films was observed for the PLD method, the original macromolecular structure was only partially degraded when the PED technique was used, emphasizing the superiority of the PED method over PLD for structurally complex polymers such as EVA. Optical and scanning electron microscopic observations revealed compact and smooth EVA films deposited by pulsed electron beam ablation as opposed to heterogeneous films with many different sized particulates obtained by PLD.

Solvent-free electrically conductive Ag/ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) composites for paper-based printable electronics

Solvent-free electrically conductive composites have been applied to flexible electronics to obtain high electrical conductivity. However, some of the proposed composites have low electrical conductivities and are unable to meet the requirements of commercial printable electronics. In this study, solvent-free electrically conductive Ag/EVA (ethylene vinyl acetate) composites for paper-based printable electronics were prepared by a thermal melting method. The properties of these electrically conductive Ag/EVA composites, including particle sizes, morphologies and phase purities of the flake silver flake powders, were investigated using a particle size analyzer, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD), respectively. The results showed that nanometer-thick flake silver flake powders with smooth and flat surfaces were made by the nanofilm transition technique. These obtained powders were able to form smooth face-to-face contacts, which facilitated the formation of an excellent conductive network in the conductive system. Dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) was conducted to investigate the mechanical properties of EVA and Ag/EVA composites. A Fourier transformation infra-red (FTIR) spectrometer, laser micro-Raman spectrometer and thermogravimetric analyzer were used to analyze the organic functional groups, glass transition temperatures and thermal weight losses of the EVA resin and solvent-free electrically conductive composites. The solvent-free electrically conductive Ag/EVA composite, which contained 55 wt% of the as-prepared flake silver flake powders, was found to have an extremely low volume resistivity of 1.23 × 10-4 Ω cm as well as excellent bending performance and adhesion. These features indicate the great potential of these composites for application in printed electronics.

Layered Poly(ethylene-co-vinyl acetate)/Poly(ethylene-co-vinyl alcohol) Membranes with Enhanced Water Separation Selectivity and Performance

A three-layered membrane based on poly(ethylene-co-vinyl acetate) (EVA) and hydrolyzed EVA-poly(ethylene-co-vinyl alcohol) (EVOH), was elaborated by the surface hydrolysis of a dense EVA membrane. Because of the chemical modifications, the three-layered EVOH/EVA/EVOH membrane was characterized by the particular microstructure (amorphous EVA and semicrystalline EVOH) and the tunable hydrophilic/hydrophobic balance. Also, these modifications led to the membrane with the selective barrier properties compared with the pure EVA and completely hydrolyzed EVOH membranes. The water barrier behavior was related to the strong hydrogen-bond interactions of water and vinyl alcohol groups, whereas the weak chemical interactions were revealed for gases (N₂ and O₂). Furthermore, the influence of the polymer rubbery or glassy state on the permeation kinetics was established. In the case of the three-layered membrane, the considerably high selectivity values were obtained for H₂O/O₂ (∼11 900) and H₂O/N₂ (∼48 000) at 25 °C. In addition to these highly selective properties, the three-layered structure does not present delamination features due to its elaboration procedure. Thus, these new layered membranes are very promising as selective materials for the water and gas separation and can be potentially used in food packaging or for the gas dehydration.

Correlated and cooperative motions in segmental relaxation: Influence of constitutive unit weight and intermolecular interactions

This work clarifies the notion of correlated and cooperative motions appearing during the α-relaxation process through the role of the molecular weight of the constitutive units and of the interchain dipolar interactions. By studying amorphous copolymers of poly(ethylene-co-vinyl acetate) with different vinyl acetate contents, we show that the correlated motions are not sensitive to the interchain dipolar interactions, in contrast to the cooperative motions, which increase with a strengthening of the intermolecular interactions for this sample family. Concerning the influence of the molecular weight m_{0}, the notion of "correlated motions" seems to be equivalent to the notion of "cooperative motions" only for low m_{0} systems.

A, Thomas S, Marais S. Tunable water barrier properties of EVA by clay insertion?

Nanoclay inclusion into a matrix largely reduces water permeability with a time-scale shift of water flux.