A smart and responsive crystalline porous organic cage membrane with switchable pore apertures for graded molecular sieving

Abstract Membranes with high selectivity offer an attractive route to molecular separations, where technologies such as distillation and chromatography are energy intensive. However, it remains challenging to fine tune the structure and porosity in membranes, particularly to separate molecules of similar size. Here, we report a process for producing composite membranes that comprise crystalline porous organic cage films fabricated by interfacial synthesis on a polyacrylonitrile support. These membranes exhibit ultrafast solvent permeance and high rejection of organic dyes with molecular weights over 600 g mol −1 . The crystalline cage film is dynamic, and its pore aperture can be switched in methanol to…

• DL
  Diamond Light Source

  Award: CY23666
• LT
  Leverhulme Trust
• RS
  Royal Society
• RS
  Royal Society of Chemistry

  Award: M19-2442
• CS
  China Scholarship Council
• LR
  Leverhulme Research Centre for Functional Materials Design
• EA
  Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

  Awards: EP/N004884/1, EP/R018847/1, EP/R00661X/1, EP/R029180/1, EP/R018847/1, CY23666, EP/R029180/2, EP/S019367/1, EP/N004884/1, EP/X527257/1, EP/R018847, EP/R008280/1, EP/N004884
• CG
  Chinese Government Scholarship