Many futurists envision a world in which polymer membranes with molecular-sized channels are used to capture carbon, produce solar-based fuels, or desalinating sea water, among many other functions. This will require methods by which such membranes can be readily fabricated in bulk quantities. A technique representing a significant first step down that road has now been successfully demonstrated.
Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have developed a solution-based method for inducing the self-assembly of flexible polymer membranes with highly aligned subnanometer channels. Fully compatible with commercial membrane-fabrication processes, this new technique is believed to be the first example of organic nanotubes fabricated into a functional membrane over macroscopic distances.
"We've used nanotube-forming cyclic peptides and block co-polymers to demonstrate a directed co-assembly technique for fabricating subnanometer porous membranes over macroscopic distances," says Ting Xu, a polymer scientist who led this project. "This technique should enable us to generate porous thin films in the future where the size and shape of the channels can be tailored by the molecular structure of the organic nanotubes."
Xu, who holds joint appointments with Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division and the University of California Berkeley's Departments of Materials Sciences and Engineering, and Chemistry, is the lead author of a paper describing this work, which has been published in the journal ACS Nano. The paper is titled "Subnanometer Porous Thin Films by the Co-assembly of Nanotube Subunits and Block Copolymers."
Co-authoring the paper with Xu were Nana Zhao, Feng Ren, Rami Hourani, Ming Tsang Lee, Jessica Shu, Samuel Mao, and
Brett Helms, who is with the Molecular Foundry, a DOE nanoscience center hosted at Berkeley
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| Contact: Lynn Yarris lcyarris@lbl.gov 510-486-5375 DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Source:Eurekalert |