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Mesoporous Silica Thin Membranes with Large Vertical Mesochannels for Nanosize‐Based Separation
Author(s) -
Liu Yupu,
Shen Dengke,
Chen Gang,
Elzatahry Ahmed A.,
Pal Manas,
Zhu Hongwei,
Wu Longlong,
Lin Jianjian,
AlDahyan Daifallah,
Li Wei,
Zhao Dongyuan
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
advanced materials
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 10.707
H-Index - 527
eISSN - 1521-4095
pISSN - 0935-9648
DOI - 10.1002/adma.201702274
Subject(s) - membrane , materials science , mesoporous material , mesoporous silica , filtration (mathematics) , chemical engineering , nanotechnology , nanoparticle , micelle , chemistry , organic chemistry , biochemistry , statistics , mathematics , engineering , catalysis , aqueous solution
Membrane separation technologies are of great interest in industrial processes such as water purification, gas separation, and materials synthesis. However, commercial filtration membranes have broad pore size distributions, leading to poor size cutoff properties. In this work, mesoporous silica thin membranes with uniform and large vertical mesochannels are synthesized via a simple biphase stratification growth method, which possess an intact structure over centimeter size, ultrathin thickness (≤50 nm), high surface areas (up to 1420 m 2 g −1 ), and tunable pore sizes from ≈2.8 to 11.8 nm by adjusting the micelle parameters. The nanofilter devices based on the free‐standing mesoporous silica thin membranes show excellent performances in separating differently sized gold nanoparticles (>91.8%) and proteins (>93.1%) due to the uniform pore channels. This work paves a promising way to develop new membranes with well‐defined pore diameters for highly efficient nanosize‐based separation at the macroscale.