Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) with tunable pore sizes and ordered structures are ideal materials for engineering nanofiltration (NF) membranes. However, most of the COFs prepared by solvothermal synthesis are unprocessable powders and fail to form well-structured membranes, which seriously hinders the development of COF NF membranes. Herein, colloidal 2D-COFs with processable membrane formation ability were synthesized by oil-in-water emulsion interfacial polymerization technology. COF NF membranes with tailored thickness and surface charge were fabricated via a layer-by-layer (LBL) assembly strategy. The prepared COF NF membrane achieved precise sieving of dye molecules with high permeance (85 L·m-2·h-1·bar-1). In this work, the strategy of prepared COF NF membranes based on colloid 2D-COF LBL assembly is proposed for the first time, which provides a new idea for the on-demand design and preparation of COF membranes for precise molecular sieving.
Keywords: COFs; colloidal; layer-by-layer; nanofiltration membrane; precise molecular sieving.