Our work on formation of membranes is extensive and includes polymeric, ceramic and hybrid polymer-ceramic and silane-modified ceramic materials. Work to form "mixed matrix composites" comprised of blends of molecular sieving entities within the matrix of a conventional polymer is also underway. This project seeks to achieve ultra high performance membrane properties without sacrificing the ease of formation associated with conventional polymers. Hollow fiber and flat asymmetric structures are being studied. The larger scale porosity and molecular and segmental level morphology are both important features in the transitional zone between the more-or-less well-defined dense skin and highly porous substrate of asymmetric membranes. Without reliable means of characterizing local morphologies at the scale significant to a penetrant, it is difficult to engineer the morphology. As a result, we have been drawn increasingly toward improving characterization methods for asymmetric media as we push the existing state of the art of formation technology.

• Membrane and barrier materials
• Penetrant history and temperature-dependent phenomena