Fabrication of functional polyethersulfone (PES) based materials for blood purification

Abstract

Polyethersulfone (PES) based materials have been increasingly applied in the area of blood purification, because of their outstanding thermal, oxidative, physical/chemical stability, excellent mechanical properties, mild sterilization condition and ease of processing, etc. In addition, PES can easily form highly porous structure internally by phase inversion between aqueous solution and organic solvents. This pore-forming characteristic contributes to PES based materials for effective adsorption and separation in hemodialysis (HD), hemoperfusion (HP) and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). However, the intrinsic hydrophobic nature of PES that leads to biofouling and relatively poor hemocompatibility restricts their further practical use. Hence, this account firstly outlines the concept of heparin-like functionalization of PES, aiming to find an effective way to address the hemocompatibility issues. Then, we discuss the fabrication strategy of functional PES based materials and highlight the virtue of proposed in-situ crosslinking copolymerization method. Afterwards, we retrospect the fabricated multifunctional PES products including membranes, microspheres and fibers, with not only anti-fouling, antibacterial, anticoagulant and antioxidant functions, but also stimulus responsiveness under pH, salinity, anion, temperature, photoperiod and redox, etc. The intelligence together with novel structures such as core-shell and bionic design enriches the variety of PES based materials and maximumly promoting the blood toxin adsorption and separation capacity. Thus, they are promising for HD, HP towards artificial kidney, liver and lung, where the current research cases are listed. Finally, we summarize the perspectives and challenges of PES based materials for blood purification, and hope to provide a guideline for development of these materials from functionalization, fabrication and products to biomedical engineering applications.