FEDER - URN - PHASME - EMERGENT
Kohesio
UNIVERSITE DE ROUEN-NORMANDIE
Polymer-based membranes are used in many sectors of activity due to their variability of function, their modularity and their performance/cost ratio. Thus, membrane systems are experiencing very significant growth for various applications ranging from separation and filtration (reverse osmosis, nanofiltration, dialysis) to biomedical (dressing, implant) and tissue engineering, including cosmetics, galenics, agri-food, transport and energy (hydrogen fuel cells). One of the current challenges for organic membranes is to achieve better performance in terms of barriers and/or selectivity while maintaining good thermomechanical qualities and durability. The Polymer Barrier Materials and Membranes (MPBM) team is recognized for its expertise in the development of original and promising solutions to meet this challenge. Today, membranes presenting properties that can be modulated via an external stimulus (temperature, pH, pressure, steam, light, etc.) are of particular interest for the development of functional systems with reversible properties with high selectivity. This axis, not yet exploited in the MPBM team, opens new perspectives towards multiple applications, notably in microfluidics, controlled release of an active ingredient, biomolecular analyses, detection of VOCs, intelligent textiles, sensors. Light has obvious advantages for dynamically controlling the transfer of matter. Indeed, it is a rapid, neutral, local (at the nanometer scale) and reversible external stimulus. The objective of the project is to develop new porous membranes with photosensitive properties. The pores of the membrane will be chemically modified by grafting an object of interest (polymer chains, micelles, proteins, etc.) via a photosensitive group (azobenzene, nitrobenzyl). The presence of the photosensitive group between the surface of the cavities and the object of interest will allow, in the case of a photolabile group (nitrobenzyl), the release of an object of interest (micelles) or in the case of a photosensitive group (azobenzene) access to significant variations in pore diameter and thus be able to modulate significantly the flow of small diffusing species.
Smarter Europe / Research and innovation / Research and innovation activities in public research centres and centres of competence including networking