Engineering Vesicle-Like Polyamide Nanofiltration Membrane via Interfacial Polymerization on Shear-Triggered Nanoclay Hydrogel

Exploiting polyamide membranes with various architectures is highly attractive for improving their nanofiltration performance. However, conventional liquid-based reaction platforms suffer from limited structural tunability and stability owing to their inherent fluidity, making precise control over the reaction process and the membrane architecture challenging. Herein, a facile strategy employing thixotropic nanoclay hydrogel as an interfacial polymerization platform is proposed to fabricate ultrathin, vesicle-like polyamide membranes with enhanced nanofiltration performance. The key to this design lies in not only leveraging the shear-triggered vesicle-patterned hydrogel as a morphological template for polyamide membranes, but also harnessing nanoclay-monomer interactions to retard polymerization kinetics for reducing membrane thickness. The prepared membranes exhibit a 41% enhancement in water permeance while maintaining excellent Na 2 SO 4 rejection above 99%, outperforming most commercial membranes and many reported counterparts. Furthermore, the shear-induced rapid, reversible sol–gel transition allows for the swift construction of uniform, stable, large-area reaction platforms on various substrates, as well as efficient recovery of reaction media and residual monomers, through a simple blade-coating process, suggesting its potential for scale-up. This work establishes a controllable interfacial polymerization platform for modulating polymerization kinetics and morphology of polyamide membranes.