Quantifying pore spatial uniformity: Application on membranes before and after plasma etching

Abstract

Membranes play a critical role in diverse applications, including filtration and tissue engineering. The importance of membrane performance optimization highlights the necessity of accurately characterizing the pore structure. Traditional Pore Size Distribution methodologies are widely used to quantify size uniformity. Uniformity though, integrates both size and spatial pore structure aspects, thus necessitating the synergy of complementary techniques to analyze pore structure. This work empowers classic pore metrology with stochastic geometry, specifically the Nearest Neighbour Index (NNI) to assess the spatial uniformity of pores in membrane Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) images. Through a comprehensive analysis of Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) before and after plasma etching, along with nanofilament coated Polyethersulfone (PES) membranes, this analysis enhances our understanding of membrane morphology through pore structure and pore spatial arrangement. The findings indicate that increasing magnification leads to a decrease in apparent spatial uniformity, indicative of effects regarding the inclusion in analysis of families of finer pores. In almost all cases, NNI values show higher uniformity compared to a fully random scenario. Additionally, it is found that plasma etching does not have significant effects on spatial uniformity introducing only a slight uniformity in pore centroid arrangement, reflected in a small NNI increase. Furthermore, a pore area shuffling technique reveals the effects of pore density and size on spatial uniformity, highlighting patterns inherent to the materials under study.