Highly charged hierarchically structured porous anion exchange membranes with excellent performance

Fabrication of Porous Anion Exchange Membranes for ion transport and ionic selectivity has gained tremendous attention as a prospect for broad application in separation and energy conversion. In this work, we developed a novel strategy to fabricate highly charged hierarchical porous anion exchange membranes (AEM) with high performance. The membranes were prepared by coupling quaternized poly (2-dimethylaminoethanol-N-2,3-dimethylphenyl oxide) (QDAPPO) and an organosilane ionic liquid (IL). The electrostatic ionic interactions provide the porous system. When applied in acid recovery, the obtained membranes achieved a high separation factor of 86.5 with proton dialysis coefficient of 0.027 m h−1 at 25 °C. This unique efficiency is about 4.7 times that of commercial membrane. More interestingly, the strategy presents in this work tackle the great challenge of fabricating highly charged, thinner and dimensional stable AEM.