Facile and fast fabrication of high structure-stable thin film nanocomposite membrane for potential application in solvent resistance nanofiltration

© 2019 Elsevier B.V. We propose an interfacial design strategy to prepare novel, highly structure-stable thin film nanocomposite (TFN) nanofiltration (NF) membranes. It employs NMG-assisted dopamine modification on nanoparticles and a substrate, followed by interfacial polymerization. Our approach overcomes two problems that are typical of composite membranes – a weak interlayer interactive force, and poor compatibility between inorganic nanoparticles and a polymer matrix in nanocomposite membranes. The TFN membrane presented here has a high methanol permeance (2.18 L·m−2 ·h−1·bar−1) and a high rejection (99.1%) to acid red 18 (MW = 509 g·mol−1), which is superior to commercial solvent resistant NF (SRNF) membranes and most literature on SRNF membranes. More importantly, our TFN membranes exhibit a high degree of structural stability, demonstrated by immersion in three organic solvents for 15 days and a two day continuous filtration test. Our strategy is facile and highly flexible, has high potential for deployment in SRNF, and may stimulate the development of practical SRNF applications in the near future