High Gas Permeability in Aged Superglassy Membranes with Nanosized UiO‐66‐NH2/cPIM‐1 Network Fillers

Boya Qiu, Ming Yu, Jose m. Luque-Alled, Shengzhe Ding, Andrew b. Foster, Peter m. Budd, Xiaolei Fan, Patricia Gorgojo

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Superglassy membranes synthesised by polymers of intrinsic microporosity (PIMs) suffer from physical aging and show poor gas permeance over time, especially thin membranes, due to the fast rearrangement of nonequilibrium polymer chains. Herein, we constructed a novel PIM-1 thin film nanocomposite membrane (TFN) using nanosized UiO-66−NH 2 (≈10 nm)/carboxylated PIM-1 (cPIM-1) as the composite filler. Unlike conventional fillers, which interact with the polymer only via the surface, the UiO-66−NH 2/cPIM-1 forms a stable three-dimensional (3D) network intertwining with the polymer chains, being very effective to impede chain relaxation, and thus physical aging. Nanosizing of UiO-66−NH 2 was achieved by regulating the nucleation kinetics using carbon quantum dots (CQD) during the synthesis. This led to increased surface area, and hence more functional groups to bond with cPIM-1 (via hydrogen bonding between −NH 2 and −COOH groups), which also improved interfacial compatibility between the 3D network and polymer chains avoiding defect formation. As a result, the novel TFN showed significantly improved performance in gas separation along with reduced aging (i.e. ≈6 % loss in CO 2 permeability over 63 days); the aged membranes had a CO 2 permeance of 2504 GPU and ideal selectivity values of 37.2 and 23.8 for CO 2/N 2 and CO 2/CH 4, respectively.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere202316356
JournalAngewandte Chemie International Edition
Volume63
Issue number1
Early online date20 Nov 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2 Jan 2024

Keywords

  • gas separation
  • thin film nanocomposite membranes
  • polymer of intrinsic microporosity
  • aging
  • metal-organic frameworks

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