The present disclosure relates to systems and methods for electrically conductive membrane separation from a mixture solution via membrane nanofiltration, electro-filtration, or electro-extraction by: generating an electric field at the membrane filter, holding the membrane filter at a constant electric potential, or driving a constant current through the membrane filter; feeding a mixture solution through the membrane nanofiltration system; and separating a component from the mixture solution into a permeate solution.

An apparatus for enriching a target gas from a gas mixture. The apparatus includes a cascading series of parallel arrangements of a plurality of gas separator cells. The gas separator cells of a second stage receive the output of gas separator cells of a prior stage as input. A gas separator cell includes an input portion, and a depleted gas outlet that is fed to an input of another gas separator cell or fed back to upstream stages. The outlet of a current stage connects to an input inlet of a subsequent stage. The input and output portions of the gas separator cell connect to form a chamber formed by connection of the input portion and the output portion and which includes a gas permeable membrane, selective to a target gas. The gas separator cell includes a gas permeable material supporting the gas permeable membrane.

A microfluidic purification device for exosomes purification is disclosed that has high speed, high viability and efficiency plus re-cycling of cells for regrowth of exosomes. The microfluidic purification device contains coarse filtering, and/or medium filtering plus fine filter with the medium/fine filter made of MEMS semiconductor process. For high-speed operation, an ultrasound vibrator attached to input chamber/filter/output chamber assembly is also used that the vibration amplitude, duty cycle and duration can be controlled through controller. The MEMS filter is V-shaped and/or funnel shape made of silicon wafer by semiconductor process. For funnel shape MEMS filter, the exit hole size is between 0.2 ?m to 1 ?m suitable for exosomes filtering with high speed and high viability.

A structure that includes a substrate and a nanofilter formed on the substrate, wherein the nanofilter is adapted to allow nanoparticles of a predetermined size to pass through the nanofilter.

Methods for making multiple walled nested coaxial nanostructures and devices incorporating the coaxial nanostructures are disclosed. The coaxial nanostructures include an inner nanostructure, a first outer nanotube disposed around the inner nanostructure, and a first annular channel between the inner nanostructure and the first outer nanotube. The coaxial nanostructures have extremely high aspect ratios, ranging from about 5 to about 1,200, or about 300 to about 1200.

Provided are nanoporous silicon nitride membranes and methods of making such membranes. The membranes can be part of a monolithic structure or free-standing. The membranes can be made by transfer of the nanoporous structure of a nanoporous silicon or silicon oxide film by, for example, reactive ion etching. The membranes can be used in, for example, filtration applications, hemodialysis applications, hemodialysis devices, laboratory separation devices, multi-well cell culture devices, electronic biosensors, optical biosensors, active pre-concentration filters for microfluidic devices.

A nanoporous membrane fabrication method is formed using an array of sacrificial nanopillars of removable materials are printed onto a substrate. After serial deposition of overlayers of even dissimilar nature, the sacrificial nanostructures are dissolved, leaving nanoporous membrane with nanopores, channels and cavities of nanoscale dimension and geometry designed, enabling untapped and unique functions in different technological areas such as biological artificial organs, nanoelectronics, bioelectronics, molecular sensors, and biomedical applications.

The invention relates to a membrane separation process for energy-efficient generation of oxygen from fresh air. In the process, mixed conducting membranes in vacuum operation are used, the fresh air is discharged as waste air after separation of the oxygen, at least 85% of the thermal energy required for heating the fresh air is acquired by utilizing the waste heat of the waste air and/or of the obtained oxygen, the rest of the heating of the fresh air being realized through external energy supply, and a ratio of fresh air to generated oxygen in normal operation is adjusted to a range of from 6:1 to 25:1.

A filter for the filtration of a fluid includes or is composed of a support element made of a porous ceramic material, the element exhibiting a tubular or parallelepipedal shape including, in its internal portion, a set of adjacent channels separated from one another by walls of the porous inorganic material, in which at least a portion of the channels and/or the external surface are covered with a porous separating membrane layer for contacting the fluid to be filtered circulating in the channels and making possible the tangential or frontal filtration of the fluid. The layer is made of a material including a mixture of silicon carbide and of at least one compound chosen from silicon nitride or silicon oxynitride, the content by weight of elemental nitrogen, with respect to the content by weight of SiC in the material constituting the porous separating membrane layer, is between 0.02 and 0.15.

Parallel plate devices for hemofiltration or hemodialysis are provided. A parallel plate device includes a parallel plate assembly having an aligned stack of stackable plate subunits, each stackable plate subunit having a through channel for blood, where the blood channels are opened up at opposite ends of the parallel plate assembly. The parallel plate assembly is configured to form filtrate/dialysate channels interleaved with the blood channels, adjacent channels being separated by a silicon nanoporous filtration membrane. A blood conduit adaptor is attached to the parallel plate assembly at each of the ends, and is configured to distribute blood to or collect blood from the blood channels. Also provided are systems and methods for using the parallel plate devices.