Porous Organic Cages photopolymers (POC-P) for membranes preparation and gas separation

Offre de Stage M2

The objective of this project is preparing porous material for 3D-printing. The target material will be based on organic cage-like structures with terminal monomer functions. Besides in 3D printing, the materials are expected to find applications in separation and gas storage. The 3D printing technology, which allows to create complex objects, is attractive for numerous applications.

The flexibility of the 3D-printing systems originates from the use variety of building materials. Photopolymers are one of the materials used in 3D-printing with potential to produce products with customized properties. The room temperature curing of the photopolymer and the high spatial resolution (nm-µm) are very suitable for a number of applications (e.g. coating, preparation of microdevices, etc.). There is a large variety of photopolymers, like styrene, methacrylate, vinylalcohol, which exist in different physical forms. The process of photopolymerization requires a photoinitiator to generate active species under UV and thus initiate the polymerization reaction. The properties of the final products (mechanical and physiochemical) depend mainly on the type of the photopolymer used.

Recently, porous organic cages, a new class of porous organic molecules were successfully synthesized. Their well-defined porosity offers promises in application as separation and gas storage. However, their shaping in a practical form is quite complicated. Contrary to the inorganic porous materials, which can be easily shaped using a binder it is challenging to shape the porous organic molecular materials without affecting their properties.

This project will focus on the applications of porous organic molecular materials as photo-oligomers for gas separation. The preparation of the functionalized will be realized in collaboration with Prof. T. Ben from the university of Jilin.

Starting date: 15/03/2018; 5 months project