A cohesive granular material comprises granules made of a stiff substance and having a grain size in the range from 55 m to 2.0 mm; an elastomeric substance connecting the granules, a Young's modulus of the elastomeric substance being at maximum 0.5 times a Young's modulus of the stiff substance; and voids between the granules, the voids being interconnected and providing a fluid permeability to the cohesive granular material.

A porous membrane having a porous matrix formed of a thermoplastic polymer material and inorganic filler particles embedded in the porous matrix, the inorganic filler particles having an accessible surface comprising nucleophilic groups bonded to the inorganic filler particles is functionalised by bringing the porous membrane in contact with an aqueous solution comprising a carboxylic acid and/or an anhydride thereof at a pH equal to or smaller than 3.5 to obtain a carboxylic acid functionalised membrane.

A filtration membrane, suitably for water filtration, in which the membrane includes a porous substrate layer and an active layer arranged over at least a part of the substrate layer. The active layer has a lamellar structure comprising at least two layers of two-dimensional material. The two-dimensional material comprises transition metal dichalcogenide. There is also provided methods for making the filtration membranes and compositions for use in those methods.

Micro- or nano-pores are produced in a membrane for various applications including filtration and sorting functions. Pores with at least one cross-sectional dimension in or near the nano-scale are provided. Device designs and processing allow for the use of thin film disposition and nano-imprinting or nano-molding to produce arrays of nano-pores in membrane materials functioning in applications such as filtration membranes, drug application/control structures, body fluid sampling structures, and sorting membranes. The nano-imprinting or nano-molding approach is utilized to create nano-elements in an organic or inorganic mold material with at least one nano-element cross-sectional dimension in or close to the nano-scale. These nano-elements can be in various shapes including slits, cones, columns, domes, and hemispheres.

The present invention relates to a method for the production of a positively charged membrane. Furthermore the present invention relates to a positively charged membrane obtainable by the methods of present invention and the use of these positively charged membranes.

There is provided a thin film composite (TFC) membrane comprising a support layer and a selective layer, formed of a cross-linked polyamide comprising Na.sup.+-functionalised carbon quantum dots (NaCQD), on a surface of the support layer. There is also provided a method of forming the TFC membrane.

Disclosed herein are compositions and methods that involve inserting connector protein channels of bacteriophage DNA packaging motors into copolymeric membranes via liposome-polymer fusion, which can be used as nanopore sensors for biomedical applications such as high throughput protein sequencing or cancer diagnosis. For example, disclosed are compositions comprising a copolymeric membrane into which a connector protein channel of a bacteriophage packaging motor has been inserted.

Systems and methods for treating a membrane are described. The method includes causing a nanomaterial to contact at least a portion of a wall of at least on channel extending through a membrane, and causing the nanomaterial to adhere to the portion of the wall of the at least one channel. A fluid filtration system is also described. The filtration system includes a housing and a filter membrane. The housing may have a reservoir and a filter compartment. The filter membrane may have a channel extending therethrough. The channel may have a plurality of micropores along a wall thereof. The filter compartment may be configured to receive the filter membrane therein, the filter membrane configured to guide fluid thereacross to remove substances from the fluid or to modify substances in the fluid.

Thin film composite membranes and methods of fabricating thin film composite membranes are disclosed. A thin film composite membrane can include nitrogen-doped graphene oxide quantum dots. The graphene oxide quantum dots can be doped with nitrogen to increase the performance of the thin film composite membrane. Other particulate compounds can be further integrated with the thin film composite membrane including zeolites, titanium oxides, and sulfur oxides. The thin film composite membranes can be used for various applications including desalination.

A method bilayer composite thin-film beam structure is described. The structure incorporates a bulk phase change material as small inclusions in one layer of a bimorph. The structure, also referred to as a phase change composite bimorph or PCBM, curls abruptly, and reversibly, at a phase transition temperature. Large curling and effective expansion coefficients are demonstrated. The PCBMs may be employed in various self-assembly mechanisms and actuators.