Interfacial Design of Support Substrate for a Continuous Mesophase-Templated Active Layer with Controllable Pore Size

• DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.4742691
• Publication Date: 2024-02-29T15:17:51Z
• Authors: Senlin Gu; Liangliang Zhang; Liliana de Campo; Robert Knott; Luke O'Dell; Jizhen Zhang; Ke Liu; Xuke Li; Jing Yang; P. A. Lynch; Yongjin Li; Dong Wang; Guang Wang; Lingxue Kong

Nano-porous active layers templated by hexagonal lyotropic liquid crystal (HLLC) present a continuous water pathway, which makes them ideal for membrane separation applications. Incorporating controllable pore size into such an ordered structure will facilitate more applications, but it remains challenging task using current molecular design-based methods due to their time- and energy-consuming nature. We demonstrate facile yet powerful thermal treatment process onto substrates effectively adjust the in from HLLC. A HLLC layer is formed exclusively on polyacrylonitrile ultrafiltration (UPAN) substrate as decreased surface increased hydrophilicity of substrate. The rougher UPAN porous gave rise denser phase with smaller unit cell dimensions (pore size) compared smooth one. By increasing temperature 50 °C 100 °C, flux PEG4000 rejection prepared membranes can be significantly enhanced 1.6 17 Lm-2h-1 42 59 %, respectively. This method paves new way fabricate mesophase-templated size.