Preparation of CO2-selective separation membranes with highly chemical and thermal stability prepared from inorganic-organic nanohybrids containing branched polyethers

Recently, active research has been carried out on inorganic-organic nanohybrids prepared by the sol-gel method, which gives products with good thermal and chemical stability and allows formation of high quality membranes. Here, nanohybrid means an organic polymer is dispersed at the molecular level in a SiO2 matrix composed of siloxane networks. The most common method to obtain the nanohybrid utilizes hydrogen-bonding interactions between polar functional groups of oranic polymers and silanol groups of the silica matrix.