Engineering Nanostructured Ion-Containing Block Polymers for Membrane Separation Applications

Membrane-mediated transport has industrial and commercial applications in food packaging, water and gas separation, energy storage and harvesting, performance clothing, sensors, and many others. However, decoupling conflicting constraints is commonly necessary; for example, water purification and gas separation membranes frequently suffer from the permeability-selectivity trade off. Ion-containing block polymers offer a design strategy to decouple transport from thermomechanical performance: membranes that form transmembrane or bicontinuous microphase separated morphologies enable transport through the ionomer phase while the surrounding microphase(s) provide robust mechanical properties. This presentation will focus on strategies for preparing and the performance of ion-containing block polymer membranes with bicontinuous morphologies and percolated transport pathways.