Polymer and mechanical-stretching effects on lateral flow membrane
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Date
2013-07-01
Authors
Mohamad Faizal Khamis
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Abstract
The function of membrane in immobilization and transport rate of analyte is
greatly influenced by its physical morphology and chemical composition. These two
factors play a vital role in order to get fast and accurate result, and these elements could
be improve by exploring surface and internal layer of membrane. The improvement can
be done by manipulating the membrane casting formulation such as polymer
concentration and polymer viscosity. Besides, the membrane pore structure could be
change by thermal-mechanical stretching. The result showed that the at lower polymer
concentration of 5 wt%, the lateral wicking time was decreased but in expense of lower
protein binding. In term of polymer viscosity, lower viscosity of 25-50 kcP resulted in
too dilute solution (unable to form a piece of polymeric membrane) while high viscosity
of 800-1000 kcP resulted in high protein binding but in sacrifice of slow lateral flow
time compared to the medium polymer viscosity of 50-100 kcP. Meanwhile, uniaxial
horizontal membrane stretching provides the faster wicking time compared to other
configurations but as in concentration and viscosity studies, this lead to the low protein
binding. However, the stretched membrane was still been recommended, since the
wicking time improved from 404 s to 281 s for the water to migrate 2 cm height in the
membrane strip at expense only showed slight dropping of the protein binding from
5107 μg cm-3 to 5017 μg cm-3. This study can give us the inside looks on the membrane
manipulation process to provide better performance of membrane. At this point, more
deep research needs to be done to improve membrane protein binding since its
performance always not proportional to the lateral wicking time.