Surface Engineering of Materials: A Review Based on Applications

Dipankar Pal; Sai Rohith Muvva; Sunkari Satya Prasanth; A V Sridhar

Abstract

Surface characteristics of material play an important role for various applications. Like, there are many applications of the polymeric membranes in the fields of biomedical, filtration, food processing from the past few decades. But various problems have been faced in their applications due to bacterial and non-bacterial contamination on the surfaces. Many researchers have investigated the surface chemistry and roughness of the membranes to identify their properties and the difficulties that are faced during different applications. Various kinds of modifications like plasma treatment, grafting have been initiated for surface treatment of polymeric membranes. Ceramic surfaces have their applications mostly the field of biomedical, filtration, water and wastewater processing because of their good chemical character, high mechanical strength, less or no deformation under application of high pressures and also possess strong antimicrobial due to which it is suitable for medical and biomedical engineering. But due to the disadvantages these surfaces possess mainly due to the excessive fouling, incompatibility with alkali and their brittleness they undergo surface modifications like vapor decompositions of oxides, graft polymerization or surface coating by inorganic molecules. Metallic surfaces are widely used in the applications of gas separation, ultra and nanofiltration, wastewater treatment due to their higher chemical, mechanical and thermal resistances. However, they face some challenges like surface poisoning, corrosion and larger pores sizes which can be overcome by their surface modifications by various methods such as chemical vapor deposition, electrocatalysis and many other applications. Although the modifications are not permanent, in most of the cases after the modifications the membrane surfaces have shown better efficiencies in various applications like gas separations, wastewater treatments etc. This review paper gives a comprehensive idea regarding the modifications and surface properties of the membranes which are changing during their respective applications

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