Gas transport across hyperthin membranes.

The use of organic polymeric membranes to separate gaseous mixtures provides an attractive alternative to other methods such as selective adsorption and cryogenic distillation. The primary advantages of membrane-based separations are their relative energy efficiency and lower costs. Because the flux of a gas across a membrane is inversely proportional to the membrane's thickness, this method relies on fabricating membranes that are as thin as possible. However, as researchers have tried to produce "hyperthin" membranes (less than 100 nm), these membranes often form defects and lose their permeation selectivity. In this Account, we review some of the progress in our laboratories at Lehigh University to create hyperthin membranes with high permeation selectivities. We focus special attention on gaseous permeants that are relevant for the production of clean energy (H2 and CO2 formed from CH4) and the reduction of global warming (CO2 and N2, the major components of flue gas). Our studies make extensive use of Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) methods and porous surfactants derived from calix[6]arenes. We specially designed each surfactant to form cohesive monolayers and multilayers, and we introduced a "gluing" technique, where we cross-link porous surfactants containing quaternary ammonium groups ionically with polymeric counterions. Using ellipsometry, atomic force microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, monolayer isotherm, surface viscosity, and permeation measurements, we have characterized these hyperthin films. While molecular sieving appears to make a significant contribution to the permeation selectivity of some of these membranes, solution-diffusion pathways predominate. We also describe initial studies in which we formed hyperthin films from poly(ethylene glycol)-based polyelectrolytes using layer-by-layer deposition (LbL) methods. We have found remarkably high H2/CO2 and CO2/N2 permeation selectivities with these LB- and LbL-based hyperthin membranes. These results suggest that such materials may lead the way to materials that researchers can exploit to purify hydrogen produced from CH4 and to capture CO2 from flue gas.