Achieving uniform dispersion of inorganic fillers in the polymer
matrix is a significant challenge encountered in the fabrication of
MMMs. For an ideal MMM, uniform dispersion of the adsorptive
filler in the polymer structure is crucial. When fillers do agglomer-
ate, the mass flow mainly passes through the agglomerate region,
where the interspace of the agglomerated filler was generally too
large to be molecularly selective. Finally, the fillers cannot improve
the selectivity of the membrane when they agglomerate. An in situ
assembly method enhanced by sonication for fillers dispersion was
developed to prepare a zeolite imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8)-
mixed PDMS membrane [13]. As ZIF-8 had much higher adsorption
selectivity for ethanol molecules than for water molecules, the
extended pathways provided by cages significantly contribute to
the selective permeation of ethanol molecules. In the present study,
the CNTs were first dispersed in pentane to facilitate effective and
uniform dispersion in the PDMS matrix. This was followed by vigor-
ous mixing and sonication to ensure proper dispersion of the CNTs.
Therefore, the operating procedure for mixing CNTs with PDMS
polymer is very critical for making CNTs well dispersed in the PDMS
membran