Journal
ENERGY & ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
Volume 11, Issue 1, Pages 94-100Publisher
ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY
DOI: 10.1039/c7ee02865b
Keywords
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Funding
- U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Fossil Energy [DE-FE0026463]
- U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) under CAREER [1554236]
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Polymers with efficient and tight chain-packing and thus strong size-sieving ability are of great interest for H-2/CO2 separation. Herein, we demonstrate a new approach to manipulating polymer structure by acid doping, leading to superior H-2/CO2 separation performance. We have doped polybenzimidazole (PBI) with polyprotic acids, specifically H3PO4 and H2SO4. These acids cross-link PBI chains and drastically decrease free volume, improving the material's H-2/CO2 selectivity to far surpass the Robeson's 2008 upper bound for membrane performance. For example, PBI doped with H3PO4 at a molar ratio of 1 : 1 exhibits an unprecedented H-2/CO2 selectivity of 140 at 150 degrees C, which exceeds that of previously known polymeric materials and is superior or comparable to that of state-of-the-art 2D materials with sharp size separation, such as graphene oxide, MoS2, and metal-organic frameworks. This facile approach to enhancing polymer chain-packing efficiency opens up a new avenue for designing strong size-sieving polymers for membrane gas separations.
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