Smart membranes produced through lyotropic liquid crystal templating

In this study, we present the synthesis of smart membranes, which can change their pore size in response to an external stimulus, through lyotropic liquid crystal (LLC) templating. Transcriptive and synergistic templating is used to create membranes with different pore sizes. We show that mesoporous thermoresponsive membranes can be created through transcriptive templating, whereas thermoresponsive membranes with a pore size of 2-3 nm can be readily obtained using synergistic templating. The experimental results reveal that dynamic selectivity as well as improved cleaning efficiency of the synthesized membranes can be achieved via changing the pore size with temperature.