Aluminosilicate Nanotubes Embedded Polyamide Thin Film Nanocomposite Forward Osmosis Membranes with Simultaneous Enhancement of Water Permeability and Selectivity.

Nanocomposite membranes are strongly desired to break a trade-off between permeability and selectivity. This work reports new thin film nanocomposite (TFN) forward osmosis (FO) membranes by embedding aluminosilicate nanotubes (ANTs) into a polyamide (PA) rejection layer. The surface morphology and structure of the TFN FO membranes were carefully characterized by FTIR, XPS, FESEM and AFM. The ANTs incorporated PA rejection layers exhibited many open and broad "leaf-like" folds with "ridge-and-valley" structures, high surface roughness and relatively low cross-linking degree. Compared with thin film composite (TFC) membrane without ANTs, the TFN membrane with only 0.2 w/v% ANTs loading presented significantly improved FO water permeability, selectivity and reduced structural parameters. This promising performance can be mainly contributed to the special ANTs embedded PA rejection layer, where water molecules preferentially transport through the nanochannels of ANTs. Molecular dynamic simulation further proved that water molecules have much larger flux through the nanotubes of ANTs than sodium and chloride ions, which are attributed to the intrinsic hydrophilicity of ANTs and low external force for water transport. This work shows that these TFN FO membranes with ANTs decorated PA layer are promising in desalination applications due to their simultaneously enhanced permeability and selectivity.

Novel photoinduced grafting-chemical reaction sequence for the construction of a glycosylation surface.

Carbohydrates play a major role in many recognition events, such as blood coagulation, immune response, fertilization, cell growth, embryogenesis, and cellular signal transfer, which are essential for the survival of living entities. Synthetic carbohydrate-based polymers, so-called glycopolymers, are emerging as important well-defined tools for investigating carbohydrate-based biological processes and for simulating various functions of carbohydrates. In this work, we present a facile strategy for the formation of glycopolymer tethered on polypropylene microporous membrane surface. Acrylamide was grafted onto the polypropylene microporous membrane surface by photoinduced graft polymerization in the presence of benzophenone. The amide groups of grafted poly(acrylamide) were then transformed to primary amine groups by the Hofmann rearrangement reaction. Quantificational evaluation of the rearrangement reaction was carried out by ninhydrin method and mass weighting. Sugar moieties were coupled with the grafted functional layer to form glycopolymer by the reaction between primary amine groups and carbohydrate lactones. The grafting of acrylamide, the conversion of amide groups to amine groups, and the coupling of sugar moieties were confirmed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy combined with surface morphology observation by scanning electron microscopy.

Fabrication of glycosylated surface on polymer membrane by UV-induced graft polymerization for lectin recognition.

Increasingly, carbohydrate-protein interactions are viewed as important mechanisms for many biological processes such as blood coagulation, immune response, viral infection, inflammation, embryogenesis, and cellular signal transfer. However, the weak affinity of the interactions and the structural complexity of carbohydrates have hindered efforts to develop a comprehensive understanding of carbohydrate functions. Fortunately, synthetic polyvalent glycoligands give us a chance to reveal the nature of these biological processes. In this work a sugar-containing monomer (alpha-D-allyl glucoside (AG)) was grafted onto polypropylene microporous membrane (PPMM) by UV-induced graft polymerization to generate a glycosylated porous surface for the first time. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and scanning electron microscopy were employed to confirm the glycosylation. Water contact angle measurement was used to evaluate the hydrophilicity change of the surfaces before and after the graft polymerization of AG. It was found that the grafting density increased reasonably with the increase of AG monomer concentration, and then this increase slowed when the AG concentration exceeded 80 g/L. At the same time a 20-25 min UV irradiation was enough for the grafting polymerization. The photoinitiator concentration also influenced the grafting density obviously, and there was an optimal concentration of the photoinitiator for the grafting process. The water contact angle of the polyAG-tethered membrane surface decreased from 149 degrees to 80 degrees with the increase of grafting density from 0 to 187.76 microg/cm2, which indicated a hydrophilic variation of the membrane surface by the grafting of AG. Results also indicated that the surface-grafted polyAG chains showed weak interaction with Con A when the grafting density was low. However, when the sugar density exceeded 90 microg/cm2, the binding affinity increased dramatically which was the due to the "glycoside cluster effect".