Quantifying Carboxylic Acid Concentration in Model Polyamide Desalination Membranes via Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy.

Carboxylic acid groups impart hydrophilicity and ionizable moieties to polyamide membranes for desalination, hence influencing water and ion transport through the material. Model polyamide films were synthesized via molecular layer-by-layer deposition on planar substrates to study the formation process of these materials and overcome the chemical and topological inhomogeneity inherent to conventional interfacially polymerized polyamide membranes. The carboxylic acid content in these model films was characterized using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy by quantifying the C=O band at 1718 cm.

Ultrathin Molecular-Layer-by-Layer Polyamide Membranes: Insights from Atomistic Molecular Simulations.

In this study, we present an atomistic simulation study of several physicochemical properties of polyamide (PA) membranes formed from interfacial polymerization or from a molecular-layer-by-layer (mLbL) on a silicon wafer. These membranes are composed of meta-phenylenediamine (MPD) and benzene-1,3,5-tricarboxylic acid chloride (TMC) for potential reverse osmosis (RO) applications. The mLbL membrane generation procedure and the force field models were validated, by comparison with available experimental data, for hydrated density, membrane swelling, and pore size distributions of PA membranes formed by interfacial polymerization.