A Novel Method for RO Membrane Fabrication and its Application to Chemically Tolerant RO and Desalination

We have developed a method of membrane fabrication for the development of membranes for high performance applications that addresses common challenges across the membrane industry. When using common phase inversion and interfacial polymerization fabrication techniques, nearly all properties of the membrane are affected. Modifying the solvent/anti-solvent, monomers, linkers, additives, and phase inversion orientation all are co-dependent on each other. With our new technique called TFLO, we produce an independent active layer that does not change the other properties of the membrane optimizations due to its top-down nature. We demonstrate the tunability of this process and describe its chemical basis.