Secondary-assembled defect-free MOF membrane via triple-needle electrostatic atomization for highly stable and selective organics permeation

Two-dimensional lamellar membranes featuring well-defined nanochannels hold great promise for efficient organics separation. However, the extensively existed non-selective microdefects within laminate architecture would impair separation efficiency and structure stability of membranes. Herein, defect-free metal-organic framework (MOF) lamellar membrane is facilely constructed by triple-needle electrostatic atomization technology. Specifically, one needle atomizes small-sized Cu-TCPP MOF nanosheets (TCPP = meso-tetra(4-carboxyphenyl)porphyrin) to build lamellar skeleton, and the other two needles meantime atomize Cu 2+ and TCPP to secondary-assemble crystals among nanosheets. In this manner, these non-selective microdefects are subtly sutured by the regenerated crystals with identical chemical components, resulting in a defect-free MOF lamellar membrane with enhanced structural stability. Importantly, this novel secondary-assembly method highly enhances the separation efficiency and meanwhile keeps high organics permeation for MOF membrane, with rejection of 93.8% for Rose Bengal (1.2 nm) and acetone permeance of 86.9 L m −2 h −1 bar −1 . In addition, the multipoint connection between nanosheets and crystals ensures excellent surface shearing and compaction resistance for MOF membrane, permitting high and steady operation performance for over 100 h. This secondary-assembly methodology by one-step process to construct defect-free and steady lamellar membrane provides a new avenue for the development of efficient separation membranes .