Flow synthesis of microporous organic polymers

A PhD project is available to scale up the production of advanced polymers through the Flow synthesis of porous organic polymers. The successful applicant will work closely together with a collaborative network of researchers designing next-generation liquid separation membranes.

Project Overview

The plastics and chemical manufacturing industries are major economic pillars of the UK economy, supporting 6200 companies with a workforce of 120,000. To maintain the status as a global leader in these industries, there is a need to continually innovate and develop new products to support other industries. For example, state-of-the-art microporous organic polymers can be deployed as polymer membranes for carbon capture or waste water treatment. Unfortunately, these advanced polymers have not been widely deployed in the industry. This is ascribed to a lack of suitable scale-up production techniques, and expensive bespoke reagents. Our research aims to overcome these issues plaguing advanced polymers by:

- Development of cost-effective porous organic polymers and methods suitable for scale-up production
- Transformation of current processes in chemical and plastics manufacturing

The PhD candidate will fulfil these research objectives through:

- Discovery of new porous materials that are compatible with existing materials
- Translate well-established polymer synthesis protocols to suit scale-up production
- Benchmark new materials against commercial products to provide valuable insight to real-world scientific problems

Research and Training

This research will oversee the discovery of new materials and its transformation into a product viable for industry-scale separation.The candidate will also work closely with UK-based industrial partners such as Vapourtec, and international partners like CSIRO, Australia. This is an exceptional opportunity for PhD students that will encompass:

- Collaboration with industries and a large interdisciplinary network of world-class researchers
- Opportunities to present latest data in national/international conferences
- Discovery and development of new materials that will benefit targeted applications