Ultrafiltration Membranes Prepared by Polymerization of Lyotropic Liquid Crystals

溶致液晶聚合制备超滤膜

• 批准号: 9461137
• 负责人: Dongbin Zhang
• 金额: $ 6.5万
• 依托单位: Lyotropics Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1995
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1995-02-01 至 1995-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9461137&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Ultrafiltration; Membranes; Prepared; Polymerization; Lyotropic

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.

这个小企业创新研究第一阶段项目的重点是对蛋白质、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。虽然直观上很明显，任何过滤材料都应该具有相同宽度的孔隙（以便根据粒径实现精确可靠的分离）和高密度的孔隙（以获得更低的阻力和更高的通量），但是存在一个重要的粒径范围，没有任何材料能够满足这些基本要求。大自然提供了一种特定类型的液晶——一种“溶致性”液晶——在这种尺度尺寸下表现出非常高的有序度和精细度。该项目的顾问（David Anderson教授）首先表明，这些溶致液晶中的某些可以转化为聚合物，从而提供满足这两个要求的新材料。首席研究员（张东斌博士）在安德森教授的指导下，扩展了这些材料提供的化学范围，包括具有最佳孔壁特性的超滤材料，以减少吸附。本研究的目的是利用最先进的开环复分解聚合催化剂从这些新材料中制备膜，并表征它们在蛋白质超滤中的性能。测试结果将包括基于颗粒大小（或分子量）和通量（或吞吐量）值的定量蛋白质分离的尖锐截止曲线，这两者都是标准测试，将立即传达与目前可用于类似用途的其他材料相比，这些材料的过滤性能有所改善。