Nanoparticle

Chemistry

Materials science

Desalination

Engineering

Composite material

Biochemistry

Polyamide

Permeance

Nanotechnology

Polymer chemistry

Membrane

Nanofiltration

Monomer

Polymerization

Thin-film composite membrane

Reverse osmosis

Interfacial polymerization

Chemical engineering

Layer (electronics)

Permeation

Polymer

Nature Communications

Nanofiltration (NF) membranes with ultrahigh permeance and high rejection are highly beneficial for efficient desalination and wastewater treatment. Improving water permeance while maintaining the high rejection of state-of-the-art thin film composite (TFC) NF membranes remains a great challenge. Herein, we report the fabrication of a TFC NF membrane with a crumpled polyamide (PA) layer via interfacial polymerization on a single-walled carbon nanotubes/polyether sulfone composite support loaded with nanoparticles as a sacrificial templating material, using metal-organic framework nanoparticles (ZIF-8) as an example. The nanoparticles, which can be removed by water dissolution after interfacial polymerization, facilitate the formation of a rough PA active layer with crumpled nanostructure. The NF membrane obtained thereby exhibits high permeance up to 53.5 l m −2 h −1 bar −1 with a rejection above 95% for Na 2 SO 4 , yielding an overall desalination performance superior to state-of-the-art NF membranes reported so far. Our work provides a simple avenue to fabricate advanced PA NF membranes with outstanding performance.

Nanoparticle-templated nanofiltration membranes for ultrahigh performance desalination