Nanofiltration membranes from crosslinked Troger's base Polymers of Intrinsic Microporosity (PIMs)

Novel membrane separation technologies are highly sought after to meet the needs for improved energy efficiency in industrial separations. Polymers of intrinsic microporosity (PIMs) are a valuable class of polymers for membrane separations as their porosity originates from their unique highly rigid backbone structure. In this work, for the first time, we demonstrate that low defectivity membranes could be obtained from hydroxy functional branched Troger's base (TB-OH) PIM. Further, we utilize a tri-functional epoxy crosslinker Tris(4-hydroxyphenyl)methane triglycidyl ether (TGE) to crosslink the branched TB-OH layer and demonstrate that the membrane stability was improved significantly after the crosslinking.