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Traditional polyamide-based interfacial polymerized nanofiltration (NF) membranes exhibit upper bound features between water permeance and salt selectivity. Breaking the limits of the permeability and rejections of these composite NF membranes are highly desirable for water desalination. Herein, a high-performance NF membrane (TFC-P) was fabricated via interfacial polymerization on the poly­(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) interlayered poly­(ether sulfone) (PES) ultrafiltration support. Owing to the large surface area, great hydrophilicity, and high porosity of the PES–PVA support, a highly cross-linked polyamide separating layer was formed with a thickness of 9.6 nm, which was almost 90% thinner than that of the control membrane (TFC-C). In addition, the TFC-P possessed lower ζ-potential, smaller pore size, and greater surface area compared to that of the TFC-C, achieving an ultrahigh water permeance of 31.4 L m–2 h–1 bar–1 and a 99.4% Na2SO4 rejection. Importantly, the PVA interlayer strategy was further applied to a pilot NF production line and the fabricated membranes presented stable water flux and salt rejections as comparable to the lab-scaled membranes. The outstanding properties of the PVA-interlayered NF membranes highlight the feasibility of the fabrication method for practical applications, which provides a new avenue to develop robust polyamide-based NF desalination membranes for environmental water treatment.

In this review, we give a brief account on the recent scanning tunneling microscopy investigation of interfacial structures and properties of π-conjugated semiconducting oligomers and polymers, either at the solid-air (including solid-vacuum) or at the solid-liquid interface. The structural aspects of the self-assembly of both oligomers and polymers are highlighted. Conjugated oligomers can form well ordered supramolecular assemblies either at the air-solid or liquid-solid interface, thanks to the relatively high mobility and structural uniformity in comparison with polymers. The backbone structure, substitution of side chains and functional groups can affect the assembling behavior significantly, which offers the opportunity to tune the supramolecular structure of these conjugated oligomers at the interface. For conjugated polymers, the large molecular weight limits the mobility on the surface and the distribution in size also prevents the formation of long range ordered supramolecular assembly. The submolecular resolution obtained on the assembling monolayers enables a detailed investigation of the chain folding at the interface, both the structural details and the effect on electronic properties. Besides the ability in studying the assembling structures at the interfaces, STM also provides a reasonable way to evaluate the distribution of the molecular weight of conjugated polymers by statistic of the contour length of the adsorbed polymer chains. Both conjugated oligomers and polymers can form composite assemblies with other materials. The ordered assembly of oligomers can act as a template to controllably disperse other molecules such as coronene or fullerene. These investigations open a new avenue to fine tune the assembling structure at the interface and in turn the properties of the composite materials. To summarize scanning tunneling microscopy has demonstrated its surprising ability in the investigation of the assembling structures and properties of conjugated oligomers and polymers. The information obtained could benefit the understanding of the elements affecting the film morphology and helps the optimization of device performance.

Aluminum-ion batteries with a new monolithic nanoporous graphene cathode and a novel coin-cell configuration have been developed and delivered superior performance.