Polydopamine film coating on polyurethane foams as efficient “sunscreen”. Application to photocatalysis under UV irradiation

Florian Ponzio (1) , Julien Kelber (1) , Laura Birba (2) , Kamal Rekab , Vincent Ritleng (3) , Loïc Jierry (1) , David Edouard (2, 4)

1 ICS - Institut Charles Sadron
2 LAGEPP - Laboratoire d'automatique, de génie des procédés et de génie pharmaceutique
3 LIMA - Laboratoire d'innovation moléculaire et applications
4 CP2M - Catalyse, Polymérisation, Procédés et Matériaux

Polyurethanes are used in a large variety of commercial and technical applications, due to their high tensile strength, chemical resistance, good process ability and good mechanical properties. In particular, polyurethane open cell foams appear as ideal candidates to design 2 original photoreactors. However, due to their high sensitivity to UV light, polyurethane foams can be not used directly as structured photocatalytic supports. In this work, we show that a simple thin polydopamine film coating on the foam surface plays a "sunscreen" role, protecting the polyurethane foam from UV A or UV C degradation and inhibiting volatile organic compounds' emanation. Furthermore, when loaded with TiO 2 particles, theses functionalized foams allowed developing an efficient photocatalytic system for the degradation of formic acid in water and the mineralization of acetaldehyde, n-heptane, toluene and acetone in air.

Mots clés: Polydopamine; Open cell foam; Polyurethane; Volatile Organic Compound; UV; Photocatalysis

Domaines: Polymères; Catalyse

Florian Ponzio, Julien Kelber, Laura Birba, Kamal Rekab, Vincent Ritleng, et al.. Polydopamine film coating on polyurethane foams as efficient “sunscreen”. Application to photocatalysis under UV irradiation. Environmental Technology and Innovation, 2021, 23, pp.101618. ⟨10.1016/j.eti.2021.101618⟩. ⟨hal-03478750⟩