Improving Gas Separation Membrane Technology with Atomic Force Microscopy

Gas separation membranes are promising alternatives to conventional approaches based on distillation and solvent absorption because of their low energy consumption and capability to scale to large capacity. Improving gas separation membrane technology is therefore a subject of intense research activity. Asylum Research atomic force microscopes (AFMs) are well suited for this work because they offer atomic scale spatial resolution, simple and high-speed image acquisition, and capabilities to characterize membrane materials under well-controlled environmental conditions.

This application note reviews three recent publications where AFM was used for:

• Investigating dynamic effects of guest molecules on the atomic scale crystalline structure of membranes formed from porous coordinating polymers (PCPs)
• Predicting changes in membrane performance by correlating AFM modulus mapping data with permeability in photopatterned reactive polymer membrane films
• Characterizing composite thin film membranes formed by plasma treating highly permeable PDMS polymer membranes to form a thin organosilica layer with high selectivity

(Free download, compliments of Asylum Research, the Technology Leader in Atomic Force Microscopy)