{"id":95092,"date":"2019-08-22T02:02:28","date_gmt":"2019-08-22T09:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/self-assembled-membrane-with-water-continuous-transport-pathways-for-precise-nanofiltration"},"modified":"2019-08-22T02:02:28","modified_gmt":"2019-08-22T09:02:28","slug":"self-assembled-membrane-with-water-continuous-transport-pathways-for-precise-nanofiltration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/self-assembled-membrane-with-water-continuous-transport-pathways-for-precise-nanofiltration","title":{"rendered":"Self-assembled membrane with water-continuous transport pathways for precise nanofiltration"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/self-assembled-membrane-with-water-continuous-transport-pathways-for-precise-nanofiltration2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Self-assembled materials are attractive for next-generation materials, but their potential to assemble at the nanoscale and form nanostructures (cylinders, lamellae etc.) remains challenging. In a recent report, Xundu Feng and colleagues at the interdisciplinary departments of chemical and environmental engineering, biomolecular engineering, chemistry and the center for advanced low-dimension materials in the U.S., France, Japan and China, proposed and demonstrated a new approach to prevent the existing challenges. In the study, they explored size-selective transport in the water-continuous medium of a nanostructured polymer template formed using a self-assembled <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/topics\/chemistry\/lyotropic-liquid-crystal\">lyotropic<\/a> H<sub>1<\/sub> (hexagonal cylindrical shaped) mesophase (a state of matter between liquid and solid). They optimized the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/topics\/chemistry\/mesophase\">mesophase<\/a> composition to facilitate high-fidelity retention of the H<sub>1<\/sub> structure on photoinduced crosslinking.<\/p>\n<p>The resulting nanostructured polymer material was mechanically robust with internally and externally crosslinked nanofibrils surrounded by a continuous aqueous medium. The research team fabricated a <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/membrane\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">membrane<\/a> with size selectivity at the 1 to 2 nm length scale and water permeabilities of ~10 liters m<sup>\u22122<\/sup> hour<sup>\u22121<\/sup> bar<sup>\u22121<\/sup> \u03bcm. The membranes displayed excellent anti-microbial properties for practical use. The results are now published on <i><i>Science<\/i> Advances<\/i> and represent a breakthrough for the potential use of self-assembled membrane-based nanofiltration in practical applications of water purification.<\/p>\n<p>Membrane separation for filtration is widely used in diverse technical applications, including seawater desalination, gas separation, food processing, fuel cells and the emerging fields of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/22895336?dopt=Abstract\">sustainable power generation<\/a> and distillation. During nanofiltration, dissolved or suspended solutes ranging from 1 to 10 nm in size can be removed. New nanofiltration membranes are of particular interest for low-cost treatment of wastewaters to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0048969713009108\">remove organic contaminants<\/a> including pesticides and metabolites of pharmaceutical drugs. State-of-the-art membranes presently suffer from a trade-off <a href=\"https:\/\/science.sciencemag.org\/content\/332\/6030\/674\">between permeability and selectivity<\/a> where increased permeability can result in decreased selectivity and vice-versa. Since the trade-off originated from the intrinsic structural limits of conventional membranes, materials scientists have incorporated self-assembled materials as an attractive solution to <a href=\"https:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/doi\/abs\/10.1021\/acs.chemmater.8b03334\">realize highly selective separation<\/a> without compromising permeability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Self-assembled materials are attractive for next-generation materials, but their potential to assemble at the nanoscale and form nanostructures (cylinders, lamellae etc.) remains challenging. In a recent report, Xundu Feng and colleagues at the interdisciplinary departments of chemical and environmental engineering, biomolecular engineering, chemistry and the center for advanced low-dimension materials in the U.S., France, Japan [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19,38,1506,4,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-engineering","category-food","category-nanotechnology","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95092\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}