Development of Liquid-Crystalline Polymer Membranes Forming Three-Dimensional Gyroid Nanopores

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K13780
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Polymer/Textile materials
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: Yoshio Masafumi 東京大学, 大学院工学系研究科(工学部), 准教授 (60345098)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 液晶 / 超分子 / イオン / 光重合 / 高分子膜 / ナノ構造

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In this study, we designed two-component liquid crystals based on self-assembly of diol compounds and ionic liquids and one-component ionic liquid crystals containing photo cleavable nitrobenzyl linkers. They formed nano segregated columnar, cubic, and smectic liquid-crystalline structures. These nanostructures were fixed by photoinitiated radical polymerizations into the polymer films and then the ionic moieties were removed from the polymer films by immersing in solvents, which resulted in the formation of polymer membranes with periodic nonopores. Furthermore, these nanostructure membranes were formed on polysulfone porous supporting membranes and the dead-end filtration experiment were conducted. Rejection of water soluble dyes such as Rosevengal was successfully achieved by using liquid-crystalline nanostructure membranes.

Free Research Field

有機材料化学