ABSTRACT
In the past two decades, aromatic polyimides have attracted much attention as promising membrane materials because of their excellent chemical, mechanical and thermal stabilities, as well as good separation properties. There are, however, some restrictions on selecting suitable solvents in preparing asymmetric polyimide membranes via the traditional phase inversion technique since common polyimide materials are normally very resistant to solvent dissolution. As such, aromatic polyetherimide (PEl) appears to be particularly interesting as a membrane material [1-29] in view of the fact that the aromatic imide units provide highperformance properties, while the flexible ether linkages provide good processability. PEl membranes for gas separation [1-8], pervaporation [9-12], ultrafiltration (UF) [13-26] and nanofiltration [27] have been reported since 1986. Most recently, PEl composite membranes with nanoparticles and/or molecular sieves have also been prepared [28, 29].
