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. 2017 Aug 8;7(1):7490.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-07531-y.

A Novel Fabrication Approach for Multifunctional Graphene-based Thin Film Nano-composite Membranes with Enhanced Desalination and Antibacterial Characteristics

Hanaa M Hegab  1   2 , Ahmed ElMekawy  3   4 , Thomas G Barclay  5 , Andrew Michelmore  6 , Linda Zou  1   7 , Dusan Losic  4 , Christopher P Saint  1   6 , Milena Ginic-Markovic  8
Affiliations

A Novel Fabrication Approach for Multifunctional Graphene-based Thin Film Nano-composite Membranes with Enhanced Desalination and Antibacterial Characteristics

Hanaa M Hegab et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

A practical fabrication technique is presented to tackle the trade-off between the water flux and salt rejection of thin film composite (TFC) reverse osmosis (RO) membranes through controlled creation of a thinner active selective polyamide (PA) layer. The new thin film nano-composite (TFNC) RO membranes were synthesized with multifunctional poly tannic acid-functionalized graphene oxide nanosheets (pTA-f-GO) embedded in its PA thin active layer, which is produced through interfacial polymerization. The incorporation of pTA-f-GOL into the fabricated TFNC membranes resulted in a thinner PA layer with lower roughness and higher hydrophilicity compared to pristine membrane. These properties enhanced both the membrane water flux (improved by 40%) and salt rejection (increased by 8%) of the TFNC membrane. Furthermore, the incorporation of biocidal pTA-f-GO nanosheets into the PA active layer contributed to improving the antibacterial properties by 80%, compared to pristine membrane. The fabrication of the pTA-f-GO nanosheets embedded in the PA layer presented in this study is a very practical, scalable and generic process that can potentially be applied in different types of separation membranes resulting in less energy consumption, increased cost-efficiency and improved performance.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Cross-sectional TEM (scale bar of 200 nm) along with 3D AFM images of the prepared TFC membranes. The membranes were fabricated under the same conditions except the pTA-f-GO nanosheets content.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The surface chemistry profile including: FTIR spectra of pristine and pTA-f-GO based membranes (a), XPS survey scan profiles of pristine, pTA-f-GO based membranes (b) and C1s and O1s high resolution curves (c and d).
Figure 3
Figure 3
(a) Schematic depiction of IP reaction among MPD aqueous phase and TMC organic phase on the top of PSF microporous support and the chemical formulation of pristine PA layer, where m and n denotes the crosslinked and the linear portions of PA layer. (b) The chemical reaction and formulation of pTA-f-GO nanosheets embedded into the PA layer within MPD aqueous phase.
Figure 4
Figure 4
(a) Surface charge and (b) wettability measurements of pristine and pTA-f-GO RO TFNC fabricated membranes.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Water flux, salt rejection (%) and chlorine resistance performance of the pristine and fabricated membranes with various pTA-f-GO nanosheet loadings.
Figure 6
Figure 6
The biocidal activity of the pristine and pTA-f-GO TFNC fabricated membranes as a function of GO concentration.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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