LIQUID CRYSTAL MEMBRANES FOR EFFICIENT WATER PURIFICATION AND POLLUTANT DEGRADATION

Designing innovative strategies for the removal and degradation of contaminants in wastewater is critical for ensuring clean water, safeguarding human health, and protecting aquatic ecosystems. This represents a major challenge for achieving a sustainable society1. Of particular concern are emerging pollutants such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and endocrine disruptors, which pose significant risks even at trace concentrations. The employment of adsorbent materials offers promise for selectively capturing these pollutants and facilitating their photodegradation into less harmful substances. In this communication, we present the development of novel adsorbent materials based on liquid crystalline (LC) networks with a smectic lamellar structure. These materials, synthesized via photopolymerization of reactive mesogens containing carboxylic acid groups, exhibit a high surface area for pollutant adsorption and tunable selectivity based on the charge and molecular size of the contaminants2. Initial tests conducted using Methylene Blue, chosen as a model organic pollutant, revealed exceptional adsorption efficiency, with maximum capacities significantly surpassing those of conventional adsorbents reported in the literature. Furthermore, the incorporation of TiO2 nanoparticles as photocatalytic agents demonstrated the potential for pollutant degradation under UV light, offering a dual functionality to the material and the possible recycling of the adsorbent. Future work will focus on testing these materials with real-world pollutants to evaluate their adsorption and degradation performance. Additionally, the recyclability and long-term stability of the materials will be investigated to establish their viability for large-scale wastewater treatment applications. This project is supported by the Italian Ministry of Education, University, and Research (MUR) under the PRIN 2022 WATERONIC grant.