Assembling covalent organic framework membranes via phase switching for ultrafast molecular transport

Abstract

Covalent organic framework (COF) membranes are important in low energy and cost-effective molecular separations but most COF membranes are assembled via a one-step procedure by concurrent polymerization and crystallization which compromises the ordered structure. Here, the authors propose a two-step phase switching strategy for assembling compact and highly crystalline COF membranes decoupling the polymerization and the crystallization process.