Engineering Nanoporous Materials for Application NBC Seminar Engineering Nanoporous Materials for Application in Gas Separation Membranes Speaker : Tae-Hyun Bae, Ph.D Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Separation membranes with high performance can potentially be made by incorporating nanoporous materials such as zeolite, carbon molecular sieves and metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) in polymeric materials. The fabrication of technologically viable membranes comprising zeolites, however, has been hampered by poor adhesion between the inorganic crystals and the polymer. In this work, tunable methods have been developed to create inorganic hydroxide nanostructures on zeolite surfaces, and used to control the inorganic/polymer interfacial morphology in zeolite/polymer composite membranes. The study of the structure-property relationships in this material system showed that appropriate tuning of the surface modification methods leads to quite promising structural and permeation properties of the membranes made with the modified zeolites. In addition, the use of metal-organic framework materials has been explored in mixed matrix membrane applications. ZIF-90 crystals with submicron and 2-μm sizes were successfully synthesized by a nonsolvent induced crystallization technique and incorporated in mixed matrix gas separation membranes. Resulting membrane showed unprecedented high performance for CO2/CH4 separation by a MOF-based membrane. The key was the combination of the highly selective MOF and a highly permeable polymer. When: 2:00 PM on Aug. 31 (WED) Where: Engineering Building 1, Room811 Contact: Prof. Kyoung Taek Kim (2529) / ktkim@unist.ac.kr School of Nano-Bioscience & Chemical Engineering UNIST