(524f) Membrane Protein Channel-Inserted Biomimetic Membranes

Biomimetic and bioinspired membranes containing membrane protein (MP) channels and MP-mimic functionalized materials have emerged as significant platforms to develop filtration membranes with specific solute selectivity. These membranes typically consist of highly permeable biological or bioinspired pore structures or channels with well-defined pore geometries embedded in a relatively impermeable synthetic membrane matrix. Nevertheless, membranes integrating MP-based membranes into current manufactured technology for separations has remained challenges. These challenges are possibly due to the amount of time needed to create these membranes, the use of vesicular morphologies and the low density of MPs in resulting membranes, which have resulted in much lower than anticipated improvements. In this presentation, we will describe a comprehensive approach to fabricate high-performance biomimetic filtration membranes that are based on densely packed MP channel in block copolymers (BCPs) to create robust and flat nanosheets. These highly packed crystalline structures and well-ordered nanosheets were constructed by a two-hour organic solvent evaporation method and further deposited on a porous substrate as high-throughput selective layers to form composite membranes. Three different types of β-barrel MP channels with pore sizes of 0.8 nm, 1.3 nm, and 1.5 nm were utilized in this work. The resulting three different MP-BCP nanosheet membranes created demonstrated high water permeability of ~300-1,000 (l m^-2 h^-1 bar^-1) and still maintained a sharp and tunable selectivity with three different pore sizes of MP channels. The approaches described could be adapted with the insertion of MP channels of different pore sizes or chemistries into polymer matrices to conduct specifically designed separations.