In Situ Formation of Silver Nanoparticles Induced by Cl-Doped Carbon Quantum Dots for Enhanced Separation and Antibacterial Performance of Nanofiltration Membrane

Polyamide (PA) nanofiltration (NF) membranes suffer from biofouling, which will deteriorate their separation performance. In this study, we proposed a strategy to incorporate silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) into PA NF in situ, order simultaneously enhance water permeability and antibacterial The chloride-doped carbon quantum dots (Cl-CQDs) with photocatalytic performance were pre-embedded the selective layer. Under visible light irradiation, photogenerated charge carriers generated by Cl-CQDs rapidly transported ions (Ag+ ions), resulting situ formation of Ag NPs. avoided problem aggregating NPs, amount NPs on membrane surfaces could be easily tuned changing nitrate (AgNO3) concentrations immersion times. These uniformly dispersed increased hydrophilicity. Thus, obtained thin film nanocomposite (TFN-Ag) exhibited an improved flux (31.74 L m−2 h−1), was ~2.98 times that pristine membrane; meanwhile, sodium sulfate (Na2SO4) rejection rate 96.11%. sterilization rates TFN-Ag against Escherichia coli (E. coli) Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) 99.55% 99.52%, respectively. facile property membranes.