Polymer membranes are of rapidly increasing societal interest, e.g., for industrial separations, virus filtration, or drinking water purification. Moving beyond size-selective filtration will require the development of fresh membrane formation strategies compatible with scalable production processes. Here we study asymmetric membranes formed from mixtures of chemically distinct block copolymer micelles with negligible chain exchange by employing non-solvent induced phase separation, a well-known non-equilibrium process. A combination of concepts from block copolymer self-assembly and colloidal science with advanced characterization techniques and machine learning algorithms enables identification of conceptually simple strategies in which micelle cores determine the available pore surface chemistries while repulsive micelle coronas (together with various processing parameters) control their placement, particularly throughout the top separation layer. We expect results to provide general concepts for the formation of ultrafiltration membranes with hitherto unachievable property profiles that may allow moving beyond current permeability/selectivity limitations.

Block copolymer micelle mixtures as tunable soft colloids for multicomponent membrane formation

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