Beyond State of the Art Honeycomb Membranes: High Performance Ordered Arrays from Multiprogrammable Linear‐Dendritic Block Copolymers

Abstract

A new generation of honeycomb membranes is herein described from a novel library of multipurpose linear‐dendritic block copolymers. These are accomplished by combining atom transfer radical polymerization together with dendrimer chemistry and click reactions. The resulted amorphous block copolymers, with Tg between 30 and 40 °C, display three important functions, i.e., pore generating aromatic groups, crosslinking azides, and multiple dendritic functional groups. All block copolymers enable the successful fabrication of honeycomb membranes through the facile breath figure method. The peripheral dendritic functionality is found to influence the porous morphologies from closed pored structure with pore size of 1.12 μm2 to open pore structure with pore size 10.26 μm2. Facile UV crosslinking of the azides yields membranes with highly durable structural integrity. Upon crosslinking, the pH and thermal stability are extended beyond the noncrosslinked membranes in which the porous integrity is maintained up to 400 °C and pH 1–14. Taking into account the straightforward and cost‐efficient strategy to generate ordered, functional, and structurally stable honeycomb membranes on various solid substrates, it is apparent that these multipurpose block copolymers may unlock future applications including use as molds for soft lithography.