Polymer-inorganic hybrid membranes membrane material selection

The chapters in this book by Langsam, Xu et aL, Hirayama et aL, Fritsch, and Maier et al focus on polymer structure modification to improve the performance of gas separation membranes relative to the upper bound tradeoff relations. Mahajan et al, describe characteristics of hybrid inorganic/organic membranes as a route to break the simple rules that result in equations 8 and 9, possibly resulting in materials with properties which are above and beyond the upper bound lines. Koval et al and Eriksen et al, describe facilitated transport membranes. They seek to strongly enhance solubility selectivity for penetrant pairs i,e, olefin/paraffin) where... 

Therefore, numerous siloxane-based hybrid organic-inorganic materials have been developed in the past few years. This development yields many interesting new materials, with improved mechanical properties timable between those of glasses and those of polymers. Sol-gel processed hybrid materials such as, optical devices, new sensors and biosensors, new catalysts or membranes have been reported to have high efficiencly, good selectivity and stability (Lebeau, 1999). 

MMMs consist of an inorganic or inorganic-organic hybrid material in the form of micro or nanoparticles (discrete phase) incorporated into a polymeric matrix. Use of two materials with different flux and selectivity provides the possibility to design a better gas separation membrane, allowing the synergistic combination of polymers, with easy processability and the superior gas-separation performance of inorganic materials. 

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