Porous triptycene network nanofilms with high molecular sieving accuracy for antibiotics separation.

For antibiotics, the purification and separation in the synthesis process, as well as enrichment and recycling in the utilization process, has a profound impact on human health and environmental issues, which pose an unignorable challenge for selective molecular sieving of separation technology. Herein, we offered a convenient high-accuracy separation membrane construction by using three dimensional rigid triptycenes as building-blocks to fabricate porous triptycene networks polyarylate nanofilms (PTN-NFs) by interfacial polymerization. With permanent porous structure and excellent stability, the PTN-NF membrane exhibited remarkable separation precision around 90 g mol−1 scale for several mixture separation and significant selectivity as high as 39.3 for piperacillin/6-aminopenicillanic acid (6-APA) separation. The contorted rigid triptycene monomer 2,6,14-trihydroxyltriptycene (THT) was employed by one-step interfacial polymerization to fabricate a porous triptycene network (PTN) thin film membrane (PTN–NF– 1) for the first time. The PTN–NF– 1 manifested the high selective accuracy of ∼90 g mol−1, from which realized the precise separation in several mixed systems, including antibiotics separation of 6-APA/piperacillin, for which the selectivity was calculated to be 39.3. [Display omitted] • A new porous triptycene networks nanofilm was fabricated for the first time. • The membrane exhibited remarkable separation precision around 90 g mol−1 scale. • The membrane realized accurate molecular sieving in several mixtures. • The membrane reached 39.3 significant selectivity for piperacillin/6-APA separation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]