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Updated: Dec 27, 2025

Electrophoretic Crystallization of Ultrathin High-performance Metal-organic Framework Membranes
Published on: August 16, 2018
Molecularly tunable thin-film nanocomposite membranes with enhanced molecular sieving for organic solvent forward
Bofan Li1, Susilo Japip1, Tai-Shung Chung2
1Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore, 4 Engineering Drive 4, Singapore, 117585, Singapore.
Abstract:
Thin-film nanocomposites (TFN) functionalized with tunable molecular-sieving nanomaterials have been employed to tailor membranes, with an enhanced permeability and selectivity. Herein, water-soluble hollow cup-like macrocyclic molecules, sulfothiacalix[4]arene (STCAss) and sulfocalix[4]arene (SCA), are ionically bonded into the polyamide network to engineer the molecular-sieving properties of TFN membranes for organic solvent forward osmosis (OSFO). Introducing both STCAss and SCA into the polyamide network not only increases the free volume, but also reduces the thickness of the TFN layers. Combining with their molecularly tunable size of the lower cavities, both STCAss and SCA enable the TFN membranes to size exclusively reject the draw solutes, but only STCAss-functionalized membrane has an ethanol flux doubling the pristine one under the FO and PRO modes in OSFO processes; leading the functionalized polyamide network with remarkable improvements in OSFO performance. This study may provide insights to molecularly functionalize TFN membranes using multifunctional nano-fillers for sustainable separations.
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