Incorporating nano-ZnCo-ZIF particles in the electrospinning polylactide membranes to improve their filtration and antibacterial performances

With the increase in air pollutants and bacteria hazards, conventional melt-blown cloth of polypropylene (PP), which is widely used as the filtering medium, can no longer meet people’s needs due to its insufficient filtration efficiency, lack of antibacterial function, etc. In this study, the nanoparticles of the zinc and cobalt imidazolate framework (ZnCo-ZIF) were synthesized and directly incorporated into polylactide (PLA) to prepare PLA/ZnCo-ZIF fibrous membranes through electrospinning methodology. The addition of ZnCo-ZIF resulted in a decrease in the average diameter of fiber from 1.01 μm of pure PLA membrane to 0.72 μm of PLA/ZnCo-ZIF (3 wt%) membrane. The PM filtration and antimicrobial properties of PLA/ZnCo-ZIF fibrous membranes were tested. The PLA/ZnCo-ZIF (2 wt%) membrane displayed great filtration ability, and the filtration efficiencies for PM2.5 and PM10 were 90.88% and 93.00%, compared to 75.76% and 79.37% of PP melt-blown cloth. In addition, the antibacterial rates of the PLA/ZnCo-ZIF (3 wt%) membrane reached 100% and 93.24% against E. coli and S. aureus, which were higher than 85.80% and 90.59% of the PLA/ZIF-8 (3 wt%) membrane. The prepared membranes could be used in the field of masks instead of PP melt-blown fabric, and they solved the problem of the non-degradability and non-functionalization of melt-blown fabric.