An interfacial plasmonic heating intensified IP reaction (IPH-IP) is used to fabricate highly permeable and selective polyamide RO membranes. Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) are introduced to the IP reaction interface to serve as nano-heat generators under light illumination. The coupling of generated nano-heat rapidly promotes the interfacial temperature, thereby boosting the formation of extensively nano-foamed polyamide with prominent nanovoids and high crosslinking degree. These features enable the resulting RO membrane to achieve a superior combination of water permeance (3.4 L m.sup.2 h.sup.1 bar.sup.1) and NaCl rejection (99.7%). This outstanding separation performance further enables the membrane to efficiently remove a wide spectrum of toxic contaminants frequently found in different water sources, revealing huge potential for various water treatment applications. In addition, the resulting RO membrane demonstrates efficient desalination of real seawater, producing clean water with high quality that far exceeds those of benchmarking commercial membranes.

A composite membrane comprising: a) a porous support; b) a gutter layer; and c) a discriminating layer;
wherein at least 10% of the discriminating layer is intermixed with the gutter layer.

A composite membrane comprising: a) a porous support; b) a gutter layer; and c) a discriminating layer; wherein at least 10% of the discriminating layer is intermixed with the gutter layer.

A process for making a composite membrane comprising the steps: (i) providing a moving poriferous support (1) impregnated with a curable composition, wherein the composition is present in the pores of the support and on a surface of the support; (ii) scraping or squeezing the poriferous support and thereby removing at least some of the curable composition (2) from the surface of the support; and (iii) after performing step (ii), irradiating the support, thereby curing the composition present therein. Composite membranes are also claimed having a surface layer thickness of below 0,5 microns.

A method of fabricating nanopores in a-material, the method comprising: irradiating the material to create a track of damage in the material, the track of damage having one or more dimensions in the nanometre range; and etching the track of damage with an etchant to produce a nanopore.

A composite membrane comprising: a) a porous support; b) a gutter layer, a portion of which is present within the support and a portion of which is outside of the support; and c) a discriminating layer on the gutter layer; wherein: (i) the portion of the gutter layer outside of the support has an average thickness (GL.sub.e) of 10 nm to 900 nm; and (ii) the portion of the gutter layer present within the support has an average thickness (GL.sub.i) of 10% to 350% of GL.sub.e.

A composite membrane comprising: (a) a porous support; (b) a gutter layer; (c) a discriminating layer having an average thickness of at most 90 nm; and (d) a protective layer having an average thickness 150 nm to 600 nm comprising dialkylsiloxane groups.

Provided are a curable composition including an amide compound that is represented by Formula (1) below and of which a density of sulfonic acid is 3.9 milliequivalent/g or greater, a functional polymer hardened product, a stack or a device including a functional polymer membrane, an amide compound, and a manufacturing method thereof.

##STR00001##

m represents an integer of 1 or greater, n represents an integer of 2 or greater, L.sup.1 represents a m+1-valent linking group, and L.sup.2 represents an n-valent linking group. R.sup.1 represents a hydrogen atom or an alkyl group, and R.sup.2 represents SO.sub.3.sup.M.sup.+ or SO.sub.3R.sup.3 (R.sup.3 represents an alkyl group or an aryl group). Here, in a case where there are plural R.sup.2's, not all of the R.sup.2's are SO.sub.3R.sup.3. M.sup.+ represents a hydrogen ion, an inorganic ion, or an organic ion.

A preparation method of an antifouling and hydrophilic polyethersulfone ultrafiltration membrane includes through the .sup.60Co- radiation grafting chemical modification method, evenly distributing an ionic liquid on a surface of a polyethersulfone material, wherein the ionic liquid containing unsaturated bonds is connected with the polyethersulfone material through chemical bonds, and then obtaining an asymmetric porous membrane by the immersion-precipitation phase transformation method, and finally performing Soxhlet extraction on the porous membrane, so as to migrate the grafted ionic liquid from an interior of the porous membrane to a surface of the porous membrane to be enriched, so that the adsorption and antibacterial properties of the porous membrane are improved. A mass ratio of the ionic liquid to the polyethersulfone material is in a range of (2-11):100. The ultrafiltration membrane is an asymmetric porous membrane, and has excellent antifouling properties, good pure water flux and a good BSA retention rate.

The present invention provides a method for manufacturing a porous membrane having high water permeability and hydrophilicity, which is not easily affected by a treatment such as washing, the method including: preparing, as a substrate, a membrane having a plurality of pores, which includes a water-insoluble resin such as polysulfone and a water-soluble resin including a monomer unit of polyvinylpyrrolidone or a monomer unit of polyvinyl alcohol; and irradiating the substrate with an electron beam in the presence of an aqueous solvent to crosslink at least a part of the water-soluble resin.