Tailoring the Interfacial Interactions of Porous Polymer Membranes to Accelerate Atomic Layer Deposition: The Latent Path to Antifouling Membranes

Shevate, Rahul; Rozyyev, Vepa; Pathak, Rajesh; Mane, Anil U.; Sankhala, Kirti; Gao, Feng; Segal-Peretz, Tamar; Darling, Seth B.; Elam, Jeffrey W.

doi:10.1021/acs.chemmater.3c03090

Title: Tailoring the Interfacial Interactions of Porous Polymer Membranes to Accelerate Atomic Layer Deposition: The Latent Path to Antifouling Membranes

Journal Article · 05 April 2024 · Chemistry of Materials

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemmater.3c03090 · OSTI ID:2447931

^[1]; Rozyyev, Vepa ^[1]; Pathak, Rajesh ^[1]; Mane, Anil U. ^[1]; Sankhala, Kirti ^[2]; Gao, Feng ^[1];

^[2];

^[1];

^[1]

Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa (Israel)

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is a powerful strategy to engineer hybrid organic-inorganic membranes with emergent functionalities. The combination of atomic-level thickness control, a wide materials palette, and unprecedented conformality allows the physiochemical properties (e.g., hydrophilicity) of mesoporous polymer membranes to be precisely tuned. The nucleation of ALD material growth on polymer surfaces relies on Lewis acid-base interactions and remains an overlooked motif with tremendous potential to accelerate ALD nucleation and growth. Strategies to enhance these interactions could enable desirable properties such as antifouling behavior to be imparted on inert polymer surfaces that lack the necessary functional groups for ALD nucleation. Here, in this study, we demonstrate that the reactivity of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) membranes toward ALD metal oxide (MO) precursors with Lewis acid characteristics is enhanced by introducing strong Lewis base functional groups (amidoxime: Am) on the PAN backbone (Am-PAN). The resulting Lewis acid-base interactions accelerate the MO nucleation in Am-PAN and reduce the number of deposition cycles required to achieve hydrophilicity compared with the untreated PAN membrane. Unveiling the reaction mechanism, in situ Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy measurements established enhanced interaction dynamics between the ALD MO precursors and the Am-PAN membrane, unlike the PAN membrane. Spectroscopic ellipsometry and thermogravimetric analysis measurements revealed higher MO loadings in Am-PAN membranes compared to PAN membranes for the same number of ALD cycles. We found that strong Lewis acid-base interactions accelerated the ALD for a range of materials including Al₂O₃, TiO₂, SnO₂, and ZnO. More broadly, our work demonstrates that tailoring metal-precursor-polymer interactions is a powerful strategy to accelerate and modulate the ALD. We used this design strategy to fabricate Al₂O₃-Am-PAN hybrid membranes that showed 2-fold higher antifouling capability compared to pristine PAN membranes prepared with an equivalent number of Al₂O₃ ALD cycles. Our approach expands the scope of design options for fouling-resistant porous hybrid inorganic-organic membranes and may ultimately reduce the operational costs of water treatment.

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Research Organization:: Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES). Scientific User Facilities (SUF); Israel–U.S. Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) Foundation

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-06CH11357

OSTI ID:: 2447931

Journal Information:: Chemistry of Materials, Journal Name: Chemistry of Materials Journal Issue: 8 Vol. 36; ISSN 0897-4756

Publisher:: American Chemical Society (ACS)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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