This contribution presents a new strategy for preparing nanocapsules with a shell made of a supramolecular polymer which repeating units are held together by reversible interactions rather than covalent bonds. These nanocapsules were prepared in classical miniemulsion through interfacial addition reaction of a diisocyanate (IPDI) and a monoamine (iBA), forming low‐molecular weight bis‐ureas moieties which are strong self‐complementary interacting molecules through hydrogen‐bonding. The nanocapsules present a diameter around 100 nm, and MALDI‐TOF MS and 1H NMR analyses confirm the expected molecular characteristics for the shell. This strategy opens the scope of a new type of nanomaterials exhibiting stimuli‐responsiveness due to the reversible interaction linking the repeating units.
This paper reports a new polyimide design with high internal free volume elements for fast mass transport simultaneously with high selectivity. Here, we show that the polymer design using a three‐dimensional rigid molecular structure having internal void space can lead to the formation of high fractional free volume with proper cavity size to separate small gas molecules with high selectivities as high permeabilities. These findings could strongly impact emerging gas separation applications using polymeric membranes such as natural gas purification and biogas purification to get clean energy resources.
Experimental and theoretical results of studying gas permeation through porous membranes are presented. In order to mimic an asymmetric membrane two porous ceramic disks with different pore radii were arranged in series. Besides the possibility to perform conventional permeation measurements, the applied experimental setup permits the determination of the pressure at the interface between the two discs. To predict the performance of the asymmetric structure, in preliminary experiments structure parameters were determined for both membranes separately. For the same total pressure difference across the two-disk arrangement, different interlayer pressures and fluxes were predicted and detected experimentally depending on the flow direction. 相似文献
To understand the fundamentals of enzymatic reactions confined in micro‐/nanosystems, the construction of a small enzyme reactor coupled with an integrated real‐time detection system for monitoring the kinetic information is a significant challenge. Nano‐enzyme array reactors were fabricated by covalently linking enzymes to the inner channels of a porous anodic alumina (PAA) membrane. The mechanical stability of this nanodevice enables us to integrate an electrochemical detector for the real‐time monitoring of the formation of the enzyme reaction product by sputtering a thin Pt film on one side of the PAA membrane. Because the enzymatic reaction is confined in a limited nanospace, the mass transport of the substrate would influence the reaction kinetics considerably. Therefore, the oxidation of glucose by dissolved oxygen catalyzed by immobilized glucose oxidase was used as a model to investigate the mass‐transport‐related enzymatic reaction kinetics in confined nanospaces. The activity and stability of the enzyme immobilized in the nanochannels was enhanced. In this nano‐enzyme reactor, the enzymatic reaction was controlled by mass transport if the flux was low. With an increase in the flux (e.g., >50 μL min?1), the enzymatic reaction kinetics became the rate‐determining step. This change resulted in the decrease in the conversion efficiency of the nano‐enzyme reactor and the apparent Michaelis–Menten constant with an increase in substrate flux. This nanodevice integrated with an electrochemical detector could help to understand the fundamentals of enzymatic reactions confined in nanospaces and provide a platform for the design of highly efficient enzyme reactors. In addition, we believe that such nanodevices will find widespread applications in biosensing, drug screening, and biochemical synthesis. 相似文献
