Abstract Proposal No: 9810320 Proposal Type: Investigator Initiated Principal Investigator: Joel R. Fried Affiliation: University of Cincinnati This grant is awarded through the Separations and Purification Program sub-element of the Interfacial, Transport and Separations Program of the Chemical and Transport Systems Division. The principal investigator is Dr. Joel Fried at the University of Cincinnati. The research is a fundamental study of the transport of gas molecules through polyphosphazene type membranes. These materials comprise a relatively new and extremely interesting class of inorganic polymers. Their chemical stability make them excellent candidates for a various applications, and their properties can be highly tuned through modifying substituent groups. The focus of the research is the correlation between the chemical structure of specific polyphosphazenes and the characteristics of gas transport . Of particular interest is the focus on O2 transport in these materials which have been experimentally found to have an extremely high permeability to O2. The research involves a computer simulation approach to model gas transport to seek to correlate the polymer free volume with the size, shape and electronic structure of the diffusing species. The research is expected to have an impact on the knowledge base of gas transport through membrane systems, and will allow better design of membranes based on polyphosphazenes.
