Separation using self-assembled materials
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Introduction Chemical separation is a process for the separation of a chemical mixture, resulting in at least one concentrated substance from the source mixture. Typically chemical separation, such as gas separation, pollutant filtration, desalination, and pervaporation, play a critical role in chemical industries and the world’s economy. It is estimated that separation processes account for 10–15% of the world’s energy consumption. This excessive energy consumption marks improvements in separation methods as a potential avenue for reducing the world’s energy demand, something that is urgently needed.1 Self-assembled materials, formed from interatomic and intermolecular interactions instead of traditional covalent, ionic, and metallic bonds, have drawn a great deal of interest in recent years. Extensive research into these materials has been conducted in application areas such as drug delivery,2 catalysis,3 sensors,4 and especially separation.5 Among the wide variety of materials studied for their use in separation processes, self-assembled materials have shown a number of outstanding and advantageous features. Key among these features are their cost-effective synthesis, structural self-regulation capabilities, tunability of chemical properties, and ease of producing composite materials.5 Self-assembled materials represent a broad classification consisting of multiple types of materials, such as metal–organic
frameworks (MOFs) (also known as porous coordination polymers [PCPs]), block copolymers (BCPs), metal–organic polyhedra (MOP), molecular machines, nanoparticles, supramolecular gels, Langmuir–Blodgett films, among others.6 These materials are widely utilized in the study of separation processes based on the key features of each material classification, with certain types being used for different kinds of separation. Generally speaking, these materials achieve chemical separation via the following mechanisms: size sieving, chemical affinity, or differences in diffusion efficiencies.7 In this article, specific separation applications using selfassembled materials will be discussed in terms of material classifications. This article will focus on both the performance of these materials, as well as the fabrication and strength of composite materials based upon these architectures. Due to the limited space available, we will mainly focus on three representative categories of self-assembled materials, with most of our discussion focusing on recent developments with MOFs and BCPs with some discussion on MOP-based systems.
Self-assembled MOFs MOFs, produced through the self-assembly of metal ions or metal cluster nodes and organic linkers, are an emerging class of crystalline porous materials.8 The components, metal species and organic linkers, are the chief sources affecting the
Fan Chen, Texas A&M University, USA; [email protected] Gregory S. Day, Texas A&M University, USA; [email protected] Hong-Cai Zhou, Texas A&M University, USA; [email protected] doi:10.1557/mrs.2020.246 • VOLUME © The Author(s), 2020, published
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