Novel Material Design

designing ion-selective materials require New materials and approaches

For water treatment purposes, ultraselective membranes can enable precise control over the makeup of permeate and brine streams for complex feed solutions. This level of control could enable more sustainable water treatment by tailoring the treatment to the desired end use and would substantially reduce chemical and energy consumption, ultimately lowering the treatment cost for water production. In addition, fit-for-purpose membranes would improve recovery efforts for critical energy minerals (e.g., lithium or cobalt), sensor devices, and proton selectivity in fuel cells and water electrolyzers.

During my PhD, I employed machine learning to assess the role of molecular-level features in ion selectivity measured across nanoporous polymer membranes. Our analysis identified entropy-enthalpy compensation as a design bottleneck for ion selectivity in these materials due to the dynamic nature of segmental polymer chains. These limitations can be circumvented by using materials with rigid, engineered pore structures, such as those found in 2D polyaramids.