Tannic acid coating and in situ deposition of silver nanoparticles to improve the antifouling properties of an ultrafiltration membrane

摘要

The construction of antifouling membranes has been a desirable approach for addressing membrane-fouling issues in the ultrafiltration (UF) process. Antifouling means antiadhesive and antimicrobial; however, few researchers have achieved both properties in a facile and effective manner. In this article, we report a direct tannic acid (TA) coating method combined with the in situ deposition of silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs); this was used to improve the antifouling properties of a positively charged polymeric UF membrane. The results show that the TA-Ag NP modified membranes showed improved protein resistance (flux recovery rate = 71.2% after modification vs 17.8% before modification) and less attachment of bacteria (Escherichia coli K1) on the membrane surface and reduced cell viability in the resulting bacterial suspension (reduced by = 90%) because of the combined antimicrobial properties of both the TA and Ag NPs. This indicated that our modification method was promising for UF membrane antifouling applications. (c) 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2019, 136, 47314.