Templated synthesis, polymeric porous membranes

Soft-template technique offers advantage of scalability [39]. In hard-template method, a porous membrane of inorganic or polymeric material serves as a rigid mold for chemical or electrochemical replication of stracture. This method provides an easy marmer for production of 1-D nanostractures, but with difficulties of scale up. Hard templates such as silica or carbon spheres are also ideal for synthesis of hollow strac-tures (11 Chen et al. 2003). Classical examples where the template enables the control of morphology of a-Fe Oj nanoparticles can be found in literature (Table 1). 

There are a number of processing techniques to fabricate nanofibers, which include electrospinning, drawing, template synthesis, phase separation, interfacial polymerization, self-assembly, and so on [39,40]. Among these, electrospinning process is a very effective method to make porous hydrophobic membranes. 

Template-based synthesis involves the fabrication of the desired material within the pores or channels of a nanoporous template. A template may be defined as a central structure within which a network forms in such a way that removal of the template creates a filled cavity with morphological and/or stereochemical features related to those of the template. Track-etch membranes, porous alumina, and other nanoporous structures have been characterized as templates. Electrochemical and electroless depositions, chemical polymerization, sol-gel deposition, and chemical vapor deposition have been presented as major template synthetic strategies. Template-based synthesis can be used to prepare nanostructures of conductive polymers, metals, metal oxides, semiconductors, carbons, and other solid matter... 

The separation layer, either porous or dense, can be formed using different methods such as sol-gel and template routes, hydrothermal synthesis, chemical vapor deposition (CVD), or physical sputtering, depending on the membrane material and its application. These membrane preparation methods will be described in the following chapters of this book for different membranes and membrane reactors. We note that the preparation of inorganic membranes involves a multi-step high-temperature treatment process. Therefore, inorganic membranes are much more expensive than polymeric ones. 

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