Future demands in chemoselective membranes for molecular separations and selective ion transport require the ability to produce membranes with uniform nanoscale pores. Lyotropic liquid crystal (LLC) self-assembly of polymerizable surfactants presents an attractive approach for producing useful next-generation porous membranes with well-defined pore wall chemistries and narrow dispersity nanopores. Comprising aqueous and hydrophobic domains that percolate over macroscopic distances in three dimensions, triply periodic multiply continuous LLCs such as the double gyroid (GI) phase exhibit great potential for the development of high selectivity, high flux membranes. Through recent experimental investigations and complementary molecular simulations, we discovered a gemini dicarboxylate amphiphile platform that enables the stabilization of aqueous GI LLCs over large concentration and temperature phase windows. We demonstrate that polymerizable variants of these surfactants may be solvent cast onto macroporous polymer supports, aged in a humidity-controlled atmosphere to induce GI phase self-assembly, and photopolymerized with unprecedented retention of a GI phase to yield thin film composite membranes (TFCMs). Detailed small-angle X-ray scattering studies reveal that the active layers in these TFCMs contain carboxylate-lined pores with pore diameters d ~ 1 nm, suitable for precision molecular separations.

Nanoporous materials from crosslinked gemini surfactant lyotropic liquid crystal network phases

249th National Meeting (2015)

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