Self-assembly of di- and triblock copolymers is a powerful method for manufacturing highly ordered structures with nano-sized patterns. Films with regular mono-disperse nanopores and ultrahigh porosity are needed in applications, which vary from water purification, sensors, information storage, as templates for nanowires, scaffolds for tissue engineering and controlled drug delivery. Block copolymer self-assembly has been proposed as formation method for artificial highly selective membranes since many years. This presentation will review our recent progress in this field. The combination of the most common membrane formation process (non-solvent induced phase separation, NIPS) with block copolymer self-assembly was first described in 2007/1/. We showed later that micelle formation in the membrane casting solution was the key to a successful asymmetric membrane formation /2,3,4/. The pore size of self-assembled block copolymer membranes is determined by the total molecular mass of the block copolymer, the individual block lengths and the resulting micelle size in cases where micelle assembly is essential for membrane formation. The pore diameter of most self-assembled block copolymer membranes is between 10 and 30 nm. It is very challenging to decrease the pore size below 10 or preferably 5 nm. One strategy is the post-modification of the pores after membrane formation. We demonstrated recently a pore size reduction down to 3 nm by electroless gold deposition /5/. Disadvantage of the post-modification strategy is a drastic decrease in membrane permeance, because the flux through a pore is proportional to the 4th power of the radius; by post-modification we are just reducing the pore size but we are not increasing the number of pores. In this presentation we will discuss the formation of self-assembled block copolymer membranes with pores in the one nm range and with very high water permeance. /1/K.-V. Peinemann et al., Nature Materials 2007, 6(12) 992 /2 /S. Nunes et al., Macromolecules 2010, 43, 8079 /3/ Nunes et al., ACS Nano 2011, 5, 3516 /4/ Nunes et al., Langmuir 2011, 27, 10184 /5/ H. Yu et al., Angew, Cemie Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 10072

Pore-size tuning in self-assembled block copolymer membrane

249th National Meeting (2015)

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