(584a) Thermoresponsive Antifouling Ultrafiltration Membranes from Polymerized Lyotropic Liquid Crystals

Nanostructured polymers synthesized from lyotropic liquid crystal (LLC) templates with normal hexagonal (H1) structure exhibit a 3D-continuous transport path, which makes them ideal for membrane separation application. Incorporating additional functionality, especially stimuli-responsiveness, in such ordered structure provides even more application opportunities. In this work, we present the synthesis of H1-structured thermoresponsive ultrafiltration (UF) membranes via LLC templating. The UF membrane contains thermoresponsive Poloxamer-diacrylate which not only acts as the monomer and structure-directing amphiphile, but also enables the pore size change with temperature. Experimental studies reveal that the swelling capacity of H1-templated polymer as well as permeability and selectivity of the obtained membrane can be altered via changing the temperature. Increasing the temperature from 25 to 45 °C increases the normalized flux from ~ 28 to ~ 68 L.m^-2.h^-1.µm and molecular weight cut-off (MWCO) from 2200 to 3900 Da. Furthermore, the membrane shows an outstanding fouling resistance against different solutes.