Abstract
The objective of this work is the design new types of highly efficient self-assembled artificial water channels (AWC) and the investigation of their water permselectivity and transport mechanism aiming for the transition from nanoscale to macroscale by showing of possibility of AWC-incorporated membrane fabrication. The starting point focused on the investigation of water/ion transport abilities and nature of transport mechanism of self-assembled discrete tubular dimers of rim-differentiated peralkyl-carboxylate-pillar[5]arenes (PADs). The objective was the assessment of water transport and selectivity of the transport, by describing the functioning and structural existence/stability of PADs in lipidic systems as perspective artificial water channels. By using advanced methods as X-Ray crystallography and MD simulation combined with water and ion transport investigation techniques such as Stopped-flow methods and fluorescence spectroscopy, it was proven that those channels able to form toroidal pores inside lipide bilayer, which could selectively transport water molecules up to 5.21 ×∙107 H2O/s/channel.Inspired by those results, an attempt was made to incorporate pillar[5]arenes into polymeric matrices to obtain functional materials for water desalination experiments using in-situ aggregation-interfacial polymerization method – isAGRIP. We succeeded to incorporate homogeneously PA[5] artificial water channels, which led to a ~40 % increase in water permeance with an excellent productivity of 50 L m−2h−1 under 17.5 bar of applied pressure, while maintaining high selectivity of 99.4 %.Finally, this work focused on expanding the artificial water channel family by synthesising new hydrophobic ureido derivative. These were combined with highly efficient I-quartets in order to construct novel hybrid supramolecular self-assembled water channels. Water and ion transport investigations showed that bi-component systems presents a multiple time increase single channel permeability compared to single compound systems, while no significant ion transport was detected. The highest performance was shown by the system HC8/S8-8 formed by combination of imidazol and benzsulfonamine derivatives with a permeability of almost 8.2 ×∙107 H2O/s/channel.In conclusion, this work has described several AWC systems that function as selective water filters both on a molecular as well as on macro-level.