Interaction of metal organic framework with fluorinated polymer on ceramic hollow fiber

Zirconium-based metal–organic framework (Zr-based MOF) often appears as a highly stable material in terms of thermal and chemical aspects. However, intrinsic defects that occur in its framework lead to poor membrane performance, which hinders its amazing properties. Therefore, a new approach in preparing UiO-66-NDC (UiO: University of Oslo, NDC: naphthalenedicarboxylic acid) membrane supported on ceramic hollow fibre was designed to tackle such problems. Polymerising the MOF active layer using ultraviolet curable resin (UCR) improved the original UiO-66-NDC framework, resulting in perfect octahedron crystal morphology and smoother and densely packed integrated layers, as shown through FESEM and AFM. XPS results reveal that the photopolymerisation process lengthened the UiO-66-NDC chain during the reaction, which then supplied additional atoms from UCR to the missing linker position inside UiO-66-NDC framework. The negative water flux turned to positive water flux (from −718.820 to 16.189 L/m2∙h), with a sharp decrement in reverse solute flux (from 34.194 to 0.007 kg/m2∙h) in the forward osmosis (FO) test.