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Updated: Sep 29, 2025

A Small Volume Procedure for Viral Concentration from Water
Published on: February 3, 2015
Removal of viruses from their cocktail solution by liquid-crystalline water-treatment membranes
Daniel Kuo1, Takeshi Sakamoto1, Shotaro Torii2
1Department of Chemistry and Biotechnology, School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8656 Japan.
Abstract:
Liquid-crystalline (LC) water-treatment membranes obtained by in situ photopolymerization of ionic mesogenic monomers have been shown to efficiently remove viruses. In our previous works, bicontinuous cubic (Cubbi) and smectic (Sm) LC membranes prepared from ionic taper- and rod-shaped polymerizable mesogens, respectively, were used for this purpose. Here, we report the results of virus removal by columnar (Col) LC water-treatment membranes having ionic nanochannels obtained from ionic taper-shaped mesogens. These effects are compared with those obtained for Cubbi membranes. The effects of these Col and Cubbi LC ionic membranes on the removal of several viruses from their cocktail solution are also examined.
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