Zwitterion imprinted composite membranes with obvious antifouling character for selective separation of Li ions

A surface hydrophilic and antifouling imprinted composite membrane based on zwitterion and dopamine for selective adsorption Li⁺ from compound has great potential. We investigated the selective adsorption amount for lithium from high Mg²⁺ and low Li⁺; the resulting displayed both excellent adsorption amount of Li⁺ and high selective adsorption efficiency of the fabricated membranes from the compound. Relatively lower contact angle of 50.7° and higher membrane flux value of 11.78mL cm⁻² min⁻¹ were obtained, which indicated the imprinted composite membrane possessed high hydrophilicity. In the BSA protein adsorption experiments, the anti-pollution performance of the imprinted composite membrane was greatly improved. Moreover, the results on perm-selectivity and regeneration ability are 8.94 and 91.4%. Overall results suggest that zwitterion and dopamine can be considered effective for increasing the hydrophilicity and anti-pollution capacity. Moreover, the imprinted composite membranes could be used for selective adsorption of Li⁺ effectively.