In Situ Incorporation of TiO(2)@Graphene Oxide (GO) Nanosheets in Polyacrylonitrile (PAN)-Based Membranes Matrix for Ultrafast Protein Separation

Organic polymeric ultrafiltration (UF) membranes have been widely used in protein separation due to their advantages of high flux and simple manufacturing process. However, due to the hydrophobic nature of the polymer, pure polymeric UF membranes need to be modified or hybrid to increase their flux and anti-fouling performance. In this work, tetrabutyl titanate (TBT) and graphene oxide (GO) were simultaneously added to the polyacrylonitrile (PAN) casting solution to prepare a TiO(2)@GO/PAN hybrid ultrafiltration membrane using a non-solvent induced phase separation (NIPS). During the phase separation process, TBT underwent a sol–gel reaction to generate hydrophilic TiO(2) nanoparticles in situ. Some of the generated TiO(2) nanoparticles reacted with the GO through a chelation interaction to form TiO(2)@GO nanocomposites. The resulting TiO(2)@GO nanocomposites had higher hydrophilicity than the GO. They could selectively segregate towards the membrane surface and pore walls through the solvent and non-solvent exchange during the NIPS, significantly improving the membrane’s hydrophilicity. The remaining TiO(2) nanoparticles were segregated from the membrane matrix to increase the membrane’s porosity. Furthermore, the interaction between the GO and TiO(2) also restricted the excessive segregation of the TiO(2) nanoparticles and reduced their losing. The resulting TiO(2)@GO/PAN membrane had a water flux of 1487.6 L·m(−2)·h(−1) and a bovine serum albumin (BSA) rejection rate of 99.5%, which were much higher than those of the currently available UF membranes. It also exhibited excellent anti-protein fouling performance. Therefore, the prepared TiO(2)@GO/PAN membrane has important practical applications in the field of protein separation.