Plasma glow discharge is a versatile tool especially suitable for the chemical surface modification of polymeric membranes. Using this technique, etching, (regioselective) functionalization or deposition of a thin film in the nanometer range is possible with only a very tiny consumption of precursor chemicals. In this way the pore size of asymmetric membranes can be influenced in a defined manner by etching or plasma polymerization to adjust the filtration characteristics or to create a closed pinhole-free thin film with an adjustable crosslink density to create a solvent-stable permselective layer for the separation of organic vapors or solvents.

We modify the surface of our membranes with noble metal precursors. After reductive sintering, membrane surfaces with a high catalytic activity are obtained. These systems can be used as membrane reactors e.g. for hydrogenation or dehydrogenation. In addition, we modify our membranes with supported catalysts, e.g. for fuel cell applications.

For the specific separation of individual components out of a substance mixture we develop new composite membranes consisting of molecular imprinted nanoparticles (so-called Nano-MIPs) with typical particle sizes of between 100 and 300 nm acting as effective selectors. For their synthesis, molecular templates are embedded in the polymer matrix during miniemulsion polymerization. After elution of the templates nanoparticles with highly selective binding sites can be used as a key solution in diverse separation problems arising in the fields of chemical and biological technology.