Fabrication of Adsorptive Polymer System by Vapor-Induced Phase Separation and 3D-Printing

Adsorption-based separations have the potential to improve the sustainability of established industrial processes and support the adoption of new practices. They offer solutions for isolating resources from non-traditional sources and remediating hazardous environmental contaminants. Significant opportunities exist to advance fundamental polymer science and engineering applications through next-generation adsorbent systems. Insights from macro and micromolecular architecture, polymer physics, and materials processing reveal how these interrelationships can impact the performance of sorbent systems. To address the demand for separations capable of isolating trace analytes from complex mixtures, sorbents with structures tailored from the molecular to the device scale are necessary. This dissertation explores various polymer and solvent systems to develop symmetric or asymmetric adsorptive membranes with high capacity and permeability using vapor-induced phase separation techniques. By replacing traditional toxic solvents to bio-renewable solvents to achieve comparable performance, this research contributes to greener chemistry practices and enhances process sustainability. In addition to commercial polymers, the study investigates synthetic polymers and diverse functionalization methods to address different separation goals. Once successful at the molecular and microscale levels, direct-ink-writing 3D-printing is combined with the VIPS process to produce hierarchically structured sorbents, allowing for tailored morphology at the device scale. Morphology and performance characterizations are conducted to demonstrate the feasibility of achieving hierarchical sorbent structures. The experimental design, image and video analyses, and binding capacity tests developed in this study can be adapted to other systems. The insights gained from creating these sorbents have the potential to enhance numerous separation processes and provide valuable perspectives on overcoming permeability and capacity tradeoff, understanding phase separation mechanisms and expanding printable polymer systems.