Dr. Grzegorz Lisak, Assistant Professor, Nanyang Environment and Water Research Institute, 1 Cleantech Loop, CleanTech, Singapore 637141, Singapore

Biography: Grzegorz Lisak obtained his M.Sc. (Chem. Eng.) in physical chemistry in 2007 from Poznań University of Technology, Poland. He obtained his Dr. (Tech.) in analytical environmental electrochemistry in 2012 from Åbo Akademi, Finland. In 2013 he was a visiting research fellow at the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, University of Wollongong, Australia.

In 2014/2015 he was a research fellow at the Department of Biomedical Sciences, Biofilms- Research Center for Biointerfaces, Malmö University, Sweden. Between 2006 and 2016 he has been on several short-term research visits, namely at AGH-University of Science and Technology, Poland, University of Otago, New Zealand and Osaka University, Japan.

Also during this time, he has been involved in several industrial projects for Thermo Fisher Scientific and Ekokem Oy, Finland. Dr. Lisak is an active member of International Society of Electrochemistry and Electrochemical Society. Currently he acts as Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological University at School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Speech Title: Selective transport of target ions facilitated by the tuned ionophore based polymeric bi-membranes
Abstract: Bi-membranes consisting of supported conducting polymer based membrane coated with ion-selective membrane were developed and studied as selective barrier in the transport of model analytes, e.g. calcium and potassium. In this design, the ion-selective membrane acted as a selective barrier for ions while the conducting polymer acted as an electrochemically controlled barrier. Schematically, the transport cell is presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Schematic illustration of the transport cell used to study the permeation of ions across bi-membranes.

The tuning of the thickness of the membrane was done in order to obtain the best membrane transport properties. The application of the ion-selective membrane in the bi-membranes design allowed demonstrating permselectivity and selectivity towards the studied target ions. This work opens new possibilities for the selective transport of ions via selective and specialized polymer based membranes.

Keywords: Bi-membranes; Selective transport; Conducting polymer; Ion-selective membrane; Separation technique.