A compatible crosslinker for enhancement of CO2 capture of poly(amidoamine) dendrimer-containing polymeric membranes

●A compatible crosslinker, 4GMAP, is developed.●CO2 separation membranes are prepared with PEGDMA, 4GMAP and PAMA dendrimer.●4GMAP suppresses macrophase separation between PEG matrix and PAMAM dendrimer.●CO2 permeance is enhanced by reducing the membrane thickness (~10 μm).●4GMAP incorporation endows pressure tolerance to the resulting membranes.

Poly(amidoamine) (PAMAM) dendrimers are physically immobilized in a crosslinked poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) upon photopolymerization of PEG dimethacrylates (PEGDMAs) in the presence of the dendrimers in ethanol. The dendrimer-containing polymeric membranes exhibit excellent CO2 separation properties over smaller H2. However, immiscibility of PEG matrix and the dendrimer results in the formation of a bicontinuous phase-separated structure on a couple of microns scale, which inhibits to reduce the membrane thickness for enhancement of the CO2 permeability. A compatible crosslinker, 4GMAP, is developed from the dendrimer and glycidyl methacrylate. Incorporation of the compatible crosslinker in the photopolymerization suppresses the macrophase separation between PAMAM dendrimer and PEG matrix and allows preparation of polymeric membranes as thin as 10 μm with high CO2 selectivity. The 4GMAP incorporation also endows pressure tolerance by increasing crosslinking density of the resulting polymeric membranes. The CO2 permeance is elevated from 9.94×10−13 to 1.68×10−11 m3(STP) m−2 s−1 Pa−1, by reducing the membrane thickness from 640 to 9.5 μm with 10 of CO2 selectivity at 313 K and 0.56 MPa of CO2 partial pressure.

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