Ultrafiltration Membranes Prepared by Polymerization of Lyotropic Liquid Crystals

这个小型企业创新研究第一阶段项目专注于对蛋白质、病毒、药物和其他亚微观颗粒的过滤具有潜在商业和技术影响的新一代材料。尽管很明显，任何过滤材料都应该有相同宽度的气孔(以便根据颗粒大小实现精确和可靠的分离)和高密度的气孔(为了更低的阻力和更高的通量)，但存在一个重要的颗粒尺寸范围，在该范围内没有任何材料满足这些基本要求。自然界提供了一种特定类型的液晶，在这种规模下，它表现出非常高的有序性和精细化程度。该项目的一位顾问(David Anderson教授)首先表明，某些溶致液晶可以转化为聚合物，从而提供了一种满足这两个要求的新材料。首席研究员(张冬斌博士)在安德森教授的指导下接受了培训，并将这些材料提供的化学成分范围扩大到包括具有最佳孔壁性能的超滤材料，以最大限度地减少吸附。本研究的目的是使用最先进的开环歧化聚合催化剂从这些新材料制备膜，并表征它们在蛋白质超滤中的性能。测试结果将包括根据颗粒大小(或分子量)和通量速率(或吞吐量)的值来量化蛋白质分离的急剧截止值的曲线，这两种标准测试都将立即反映出这些材料与目前可用于类似用途的其他材料相比过滤性能的改善。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project focuses on a new generation of materials with potential commercial and technological impact on filtration of proteins, viruses, pharmaceuticals and other sub-microscopic particles. Although it is intuitively obvious that any filtration material should have pores of all the same width (so as to achieve precise and reliable separations based on particle size) and also a high density of pores (for lower resistance and higher fluxes), there is an important particle size range over which no materials exist satisfying these fundamental requirements. Nature provides a certain type of liquid crystal -- a `lyotropic` liquid crystal -- that exhibits a very high degree of order and refinement at this scale size. It was first shown by a consultant on this project (Prof. David Anderson) that certain of these lyotropic liquid crystals can be converted to polymers, thus providing a new material that satisfies these two requirements. The Principal Investigator (Dr. Dongbin Zhang) has trained under Prof. Anderson and extended the range of chemistries afforded by these materials to include ultrafiltration materials with optimal porewall properties for minimizing adsorption. The purpose of the study is to produce membranes from these new materials using state-of-the-art ring opening metathesis polymerization catalysts, and to characterize their performance in ultrafiltration of proteins. The test results will include curves quantifying the sharp cut-off of protein separations based on the particle size (or molecular weight) and values of flux rates (or throughput), both of which are standard tests that will instantly convey the improved filtration performance of these materials compared with other materials currently available for similar uses.