Fabrication and evaluation of GO/TiO₂-based molecularly imprinted nanocomposite membranes by developing a reformative filtering strategy: Application to selective adsorption and separation membrane

Herein, the GO/TiO₂-based molecularly imprinted nanocomposite membranes (GT-MIMs) with high selectivity and constitutionally structural stability were developed by by the incorporation of polydopamine (pDA) membrane modification technique and the simple vacuum filtering method. Instead of constructing imprinted polymers onto pristine membrane surfaces, a versatile filtering strategy was conducted on the membrane surfaces by using GO and TiO₂ as the nanocomposite structures. And the GT-MIMs were finally obtained after a two-step-temperature imprinting process by using propranolol as the template molecules. Moreover, attributing to the formation of this membrane-based multilevel nanocomposite surfaces, largely enhanced propranolol-rebinding capacities (53.44 mg/g), permselectivity (separation factors were all more than 16.5) and structural stability (still maintained 92% of the maximum adsorption capacity after 11 cycling operations) were easily achieved. These results strongly illustrated that this GO/TiO₂-based imprinting membrane materials would achieve both the high rebinding capacity and the excellent permselectivity. All the synthesis processes were carried out at low temperature and ordinary pressure, which were energy-efficient and environmentally friendly for large-scale application.