Polyvinylidenefluoride (PVDF) Based Membranes for Waterproofing Applications

In this paper, we report the fabrication and characterizations of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF)/chitosan and PVDF/polymeric methyl methacrylate (PMMA)/titanium oxide (TiO2) materials membranes for waterproofing applications. The detailed results revealed that with the increase of chitosan proportion, the anti-hydrostatic pressure value of PVDF/chitosan raised first and then declined. When the proportion of PVDF and chitosan reaches 92:8, the anti-hydrostatic pressure value reaches to 5437 Pa, however, when chitosan exceeds the value, its hydrophobicity was reduced. In addition, the fibrous membrane prepared from PVDF/PMMA/TiO2 was adopted to make a thermal treatment and 6% TiO2 nanoparticles were added to improve the intensity and anti-water pressure of the fibers. The detailed experiments revealed that when the reaction temperature reach to 50 °C, the anti-hydrostatic pressure of fibrous membrane is far better than fibrous membrane prepared from PVDF/chitosan. Thus, the results confirmed that by adding 6% TiO2 nanoparticles improves the anti-hydrostatic pressure of fibrous membrane. The observed results shows that chitosan and TiO2 blended with PVDF are promising material for waterproofing applications.