This study reports a new interlayer decoration method for fabricating thin film composite (TFC) forward osmosis (FO) membranes. Metal−organic framework (UiO-66) particles were dispersed at the aqueous−organic interface before interfacial polymerization. Both the TFC membrane without UiO-66 and the conventionally UiO-66 incorporated membrane prepared by interfacial polymerization were fabricated as the control for comparison. Compared with the two control membranes, the interlayer decoration method prepared TFC membrane under an optimized UiO-66 loading showed improved water permeability, salt rejection, and significantly reduced structural parameters. At a much lower UiO-66 loading, with only 5% of the amount used for the conventional incorporation method, the interlayer decorated TFC membrane exhibited significantly enhanced FO water flux and selectivity compared with the conventionally UiO-66 incorporated membrane. Such promising performance is mainly attributed to the unique interlayer UiO-66 decorated structure, in which water molecules can permeate through the channel apertures of UiO-66 nanoparticles, while other hydrated ions can be effectively rejected. This study demonstrates that interlayer decoration by UiO-66 between the polyamide layer and the porous support layer is a promising and economic way to develop new FO membranes with high permeability and selectivity.

In this work, grapheme oxide (GO) nano-sheets were synthesized and dispersed in the aqueous phase for the interfacial polymerization (IP) process to develop a new type of thin-film composite (TFC) membranes for forward osmosis (FO) applications. The effects of the GO concentrations on the membrane surfaces and cross-sectional morphologies and FO desalination performances of the as-prepared TFC membranes were investigated systematically. Compared with the control membrane, the optimal GO-incorporated TFC membrane displayed higher water flux, less specific reverse solute flux (SRSF) and lower structure parameter. Moreover, the optimized membrane showed 75.0 times higher chlorine resistance than the control membrane. In general, these new type of membranes could be an effective strategy to fabricate high-performance FO membranes with good desalination performance and chlorine resistance.

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The degradation and detachment of the polyamide (PA) layer for the conventional thin-film composite (TFC) membranes due to chemical disinfectants cleaning with chlorine and material difference of PA layer and substrate are two major bottlenecks of forward osmosis (FO) technology. In this study, a new type of FO membranes was first prepared by controlling dopamine (DA) as the sole amine in the aqueous phase and the reaction with trimesoyl chloride (TMC) as the acyl chloride during interfacial polymerization (IP) process. The influence of membrane synthesis parameters such as monomer concentration, pH of the aqueous phase, IP reaction time and IP temperature were systematically investigated. The optimized membrane showed both improved structure stability and chlorine resistance, more so than the conventional TFC membrane. In general, novel DA/TMC TFC membranes could be an effective strategy to synthesize high-performance FO membranes with excellent structural stability and chlorine resistance.