Hyper-crosslinked Isoporous Block Copolymer Membranes with Robust Solvent Resistance and Customized Pore Sizes for Precise Separation.

ABSTRACT

Isoporous block copolymer membranes are viewed as the next-generation separation membranes for their unique structures and urgent application in precise separation. However, an obvious weakness for such membranes is their poor solvent-resistance which limits their applications to aqueous solution, and isoporous membranes with superior solvent-resistance and tunable pore size have been rarely prepared before. Herein, self-supporting isoporous membranes with excellent solvent resistance are prepared by the facile yet robust hyper-crosslinking approach which is able to create a rigid network in whole membranes. The hyper-crosslinking is found to be a novel and non-destructive approach that does not change pore size and isoporous structure during the reaction, and the resulting hyper-crosslinked isoporous membranes display superior structural and separation stability to a broad range of solvents with varied polarities for months to years. More importantly, hyper-crosslinking has proved to be a universal strategy that is applicable to isoporous membranes with varied pore size and pore chemistry, offering an important opportunity to prepare solvent-resistant isoporous membranes with customizable pore size and pore functionality that are important to realize their accurate separations in organic solvents. This concept is demonstrated finally by precise and on-demand separation of nanoparticles with the prepared membranes.