ZIF‐8 membrane synthesized via covalent‐assisted seeding on polyimide substrate for pervaporation dehydration

In this study, a novel covalent-assisted seeding method is developed to fabricate well-intergrown ZIF-8 membrane on polyimide (PI) substrate with imidazole-2-carboxaldehyde (ICA) as the covalent agent between ZIF-8 layer and PI substrate. Compared to ethylenediamine-crosslinked PI membrane and ZIF-8/PI membrane synthesized without covalent-assisted seeding method, ZIF-8/PI membrane synthesized with ICA covalent-assisted seeding method shows improved pervaporation performance for isopropanol dehydration. Subsequent surface coating with polydimethylsiloxane or polydopamine is applied to mitigate the grain boundary of ZIF-8/PI membrane, which results in a further performance enhancement. The morphologies and physicochemical properties of the resultant membranes are characterized by scanning electron microscope, attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform infrared, X-ray diffraction, and water contact angle. The effect of operation temperature on the separation performance is also carried out. This work demonstrates the novel covalent-assisted seeding method for the preparation of ZIF-8 membrane with high-performance, which may hold a great potential for various ZIF membranes separation applications.