Here is a link to Jen-Yu’s and Yuanze’s paper https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.0c14827
Recent concurrent advances in the synthesis of mesoscale porous materials and digital light processing have opened up a broad opportunity space for the design of hierarchical materials and their enabled applications. One immediate application area of such materials is in the separation of small molecule impurities; an urgent challenge in this case is the separation of small molecule carcinogenic contaminants like N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) which has triggered extensive recalls of ranitidine drugs for blood-pressure and heartburn. Conventional chemical separation methods have been ineffective for removal of the small molecule contaminants. Size-exclusion separation methods in particular have conventionallybeen limited to the separation of relatively large molecules. The advent of novel mesoporous materials (with programmable pore size in the Ångstrom range) combined with digital light processing strategies to create multi-scale flow structures has introduced the prospect of extending size-exclusion principle to the separation of molecules with sub-nm size differences.
In collaboration with the Millner group, we demonstrated how hierarchical control over microscopic porosity, mesoscale assembly, and macroscopic superstructures leads to new materials exhibiting efficient mass transport and size-selective adsorption of small molecule contaminants. Beyond the specific proof-of-concept and urgent example of NDMA removal, we note that the approach demonstrated in our manuscript is applicable to a broad range of small-molecule separation challenges. Moreover, we see the fabrication strategies described in our manuscript as an enabling platform for many recent advances in porous coordination polymers and metal-organic framework materials.
Please join me in congratulating Jen-Yu and Yuanze on this paper.
