New Nanomembranes Show Innovative Approach for Chemical, Pharmaceutical Industries

Researchers recently developed new nanomembranes that demonstrate properties promising to enhance the effectiveness of separation processes widely used throughout the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

As specified in a Phys.org report, a research team from the Queen Mary University of London, Northwestern University in Evanston, and Bielefeld University have recently developed a new breed of polymer nanomembranes with aligned supermolecular macrocycle molecules.

Such new membranes are demonstrating properties promising to enhance the effectiveness of separation processes widely used throughout the pharmaceutical and chemical industries.

Traditional chemical and pharmaceutical industries use 45 to 55 percent of their total energy consumption during production in molecular separations.

Membrane Technologies

To make such processes more efficient, cost-oriented, eco-friendly, and sustainable, these processes should be partly or entirely replaced by novel separation techniques using innovative and groundbreaking membrane technologies.

In the Nature journal, the researchers demonstrated that their polymer membranes with aligned supramolecular macrocycles showcase superb and incredibly selective filtration properties that go beyond the conventional polymer nanomembranes used throughout the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

Essentially, conventional polymer nanomembranes have an extensive pore size distribution that lacks a controllable way to be accurately tuned.

The molecularly predefined macrocycles are aligned in this new breed of polymer membranes to provide sub-nanometer pores. This very effective filtration gateway separates molecules with a small size difference of 0.2 nanometers.

Validated by GI-WAXS

In their study, the researchers revealed that these small cavities' arrangement, orientation, and alignment could be realized by selectively functionalized macrocycle molecules, in which the upper rim with highly reactive groups "preferentially facing upright during the crosslinking reaction."

Furthermore, according to a Nanowerk report, the orientated architecture of macrocycles in nanomembranes could be validated by razing incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering or GI-WAXS.

For the first time, this has enabled the researchers to visualize the sub-nanometer macrocycle pores under high-resolution atomic force microscopy in an extremely high vacuum, proving the notion of exploiting different nanopore sizes through the use of different cyclodextrin identities along with Anstrom precision.

Essentially, membranes can provide a cost-effective and cost-efficient substitute, although it necessitates accurate separations between CBD and other natural elements of similar dimensions dissolved in extract solvent.

Enrichment of CBD

Consequently, precise control of membrane pore size is crucial to this opportunity. In their work, the researchers said that the ore size of the aligned macrocycle membranes could be accurately tuned at Angstrom precision, which allowed a single order of magnitude higher solvent transport and three-fold higher enrichment of CBD compared to commercial benchmark membranes.

This unfolds the great potential of applying membranes in high-value industries that necessitate precise molecular selectivity.

This work would certainly not have been plausible, minus the contributions from the collaborators in the United States and Germany.

The study authors provided the key evidence exhibiting the alignment of the macrocycles, GIWAXS technique from the US and visualization of the aligned macrocycle pores, and AFM strategy from Germany.

The findings are essential for validating the molecular design and offering fundamental insights into these membranes, and researchers will seek more opportunities for future collaboration.

Related information about nanomembranes is shown on What Does That Mean's YouTube video below:

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