Adsorption-Assisted Interfacial Polymerization toward Ultrathin Active Layers for Ultrafast Organic Permeation

Thin-film composite (TFC) membranes show exceptional permeation properties of key importance for many separations. However, their design and development need ultrathin and defect-free nanofilms as the active layer to alleviate the bottleneck of permeation–rejection trade-off. Here, a 25 nm thick film is fabricated on a porous support by introducing polydopamine (PDA) as an adsorption layer, imparting a unique adsorption-assisted interfacial polymerization (IP) strategy. The PDA layer efficiently captures and enriches amine monomers even from ultradilute solution toward uniform stacking on the support, thus generating ultrathin and defect-free films after polymerization. This is superior to the defective one from conventional IP. Such an active layer features ultrafast permeation for organics, favorable solute rejection, and excellent operation stability. Particularly, the acetone permeance of this new TFC membrane reaches 96.3 L m–2 h–1 bar–1, which exceeds that from conventional IP by more than 10 times, ranking among one of the highest performances reported to date. More significantly, the pernicious permeation–rejection trade-off of the TFC membrane is thus alleviated. Besides, this strategy is facile, versatile, and easy to scale-up, giving controllable physical and chemical structures to the active layer. This study may pave a way to well-design highly efficient film materials for various transport and separation applications.