title: A review on polyamide thin film nanocomposite (TFN) membranes: History, applications, challenges and approaches.
abstract: This review focuses on the development of polyamide (PA) thin film nanocomposite (TFN) membranes for various aqueous media-based separation processes such as nanofiltration, reverse osmosis and forward osmosis since the concept of TFN was introduced in year 2007. Although the total number of published TFN articles falls far short of the articles of the well-known thin film composite (TFC) membranes, its growth rate is significant, particularly since 2012. Generally, by incorporating an appropriate amount of nanofiller into a thin selective PA layer of a composite membrane, one could produce TFN membranes with enhanced separation characteristics as compared to the conventional TFC membrane. For certain cases, the resulting TFN membranes demonstrate not only excellent antifouling resistance and/or greater antibacterial effect, but also possibly overcome the trade-off effect between water permeability and solute selectivity. Furthermore, this review attempts to give the readers insights into the difficulties of incorporating inorganic nanomaterials into the organic PA layer whose thickness usually falls in a range of several-hundred nanometers. It is also intended to show new possible approaches to overcome these challenges in TFN membrane fabrication.
authors.affiliation: Advanced Membrane Technology Research Centre (AMTEC), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia. Electronic address: lwoeijye@utm.my.
authors.forename: W J
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Lau
authors.affiliation: Institute for Sustainability and Innovation (ISI), College of Engineering and Science, Victoria University, Werribee Campus, PO Box 14428, Melbourne, VIC 8001, Australia.
authors.forename: Stephen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gray
authors.affiliation: Advanced Membrane Technology Research Centre (AMTEC), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia; Industrial Membrane Research Laboratory, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Ottawa, 161 Louis Pasteur St, Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5, Canada.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Matsuura
authors.affiliation: Advanced Membrane Technology Research Centre (AMTEC), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia; Department of Chemical Engineering, Gachsaran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Gachsaran, Iran.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Emadzadeh
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridget, 129791, Singapore.
authors.forename: J Paul
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Advanced Membrane Technology Research Centre (AMTEC), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia.
authors.forename: A F
authors.initials: AF
authors.lastname: Ismail
mesh_terms: D005374:Filtration / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods; D008567:Membranes, Artificial; D008854:Microscopy, Electron; D053761:Nanocomposites / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000648:ultrastructure; D009757:Nylons / Q000737:chemistry*; D009995:Osmosis; D010316:Particle Size; D010539:Permeability; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D018508:Water Purification / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D008567:Membranes, Artificial; D009757:Nylons
keywords: Membrane; Nanomaterials; Polyamide; Thin film composite; Thin film nanocomposite