University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, People's Republic of China.
Key Laboratory of Photochemical Conversion and Optoelectronic Materials, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, People's Republic of China.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2021 Apr 21;13(15):18237-18246. doi: 10.1021/acsami.1c00378. Epub 2021 Apr 12.
Membrane separation has been considered as one of the most revolutionary technologies for the removal of oils, dyes, or other pollutants from wastewater. However, most membranes still face great challenges in water permeability, antifouling property, and even antibiotic ability. Possessing a pathogen-repellent surface is of great significance as it can enable membranes to minimize the presence of active viral pathogens. Herein, we demonstrate a distinct design with a molecular dynamics simulation-guided experiment for the surface domination of antibiotic zwitterionic nanogel membranes. The zwitterionic nanoparticle gel (ZNG)/Cu/glutaraldehyde (GA) synergy system is first simulated by introducing a ZNG into a preset CuCl brine solution and into a GA ethanol solution, in which the nanogel is observed to initially swell and subsequently shrink with the increase of GA concentration, leading to the membrane surface structure transition. Then, the corresponding experiments are performed under strict conditions, and the results suggest the surface structure transition from nanoparticles to network nanoflowers, which are consistent with the simulated results. The obtained network structure membrane with superhydrophilic and underwater superoleophobic abilities can significantly enhance the water permeability as high as almost 40% with its original rejection rate in comparison with unoptimizable ZNG-PVDF (polyvinylidene difluoride) membranes. Moreover, the obtained membrane achieves additional excellent antibiofouling capacity with the antibiotic efficiency exceeding 99.3%, manifesting remarkable potential for disinfection applications. By comparison, the conventional antibiotic methods generally improve the membrane's antibiotic property solely but can hardly improve the other properties of the membrane. That is to say, our simulation combined with the experimental strategy significantly improved the zwitterionic membrane property in this work, which provides a new perspective on the design of high-performance functional materials.
膜分离技术被认为是去除废水中油、染料或其他污染物的最具革命性的技术之一。然而，大多数膜在水透过性、抗污性甚至抗生素能力方面仍面临巨大挑战。具有抗病原体表面的意义重大，因为它可以使膜最大限度地减少活性病毒病原体的存在。在此，我们通过分子动力学模拟指导实验，展示了具有抗生素两性离子纳米凝胶膜表面主导地位的独特设计。首先，通过将两性离子纳米颗粒凝胶（ZNG）引入预设的 CuCl 盐水溶液和 GA 乙醇溶液中，模拟 ZNG/Cu/戊二醛（GA）协同系统，观察到纳米凝胶最初膨胀，随后随着 GA 浓度的增加而收缩，导致膜表面结构转变。然后，在严格的条件下进行相应的实验，结果表明表面结构从纳米颗粒向网络纳米花转变，这与模拟结果一致。所得的具有超亲水和水下超疏油能力的网络结构膜的水透过率显著提高，几乎达到 40%，而其原始截留率与不可优化的 ZNG-PVDF（聚偏二氟乙烯）膜相比。此外，所获得的膜具有额外的优异抗生物污染能力，抗生素效率超过 99.3%，显示出在消毒应用方面的显著潜力。相比之下，传统的抗生素方法通常仅改善膜的抗生素性能，但很难改善膜的其他性能。也就是说，在这项工作中，我们的模拟与实验策略相结合，显著提高了两性离子膜的性能，为高性能功能材料的设计提供了新的视角。
