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Inspired by the surface self-assembly modification technique using dopamine, herein, a polydopamine (pDA)-modified nanocomposite was successfully obtained on the surfaces of TiO2 (pDA@TiO2). The key design of the as-reported ibuprofen-imprinted nanocomposite membranes (IINCMs) was the composite integration process of pDA@TiO2 and porous polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membranes, in which the pDA@TiO2 was used as functional microspheres. As such, the novel porous IINCMs were developed and synthesized through a simple sol–gel method by using ibuprofen as the template molecule. Importantly, the as-prepared pDA-coating layers on TiO2 could largely enhance the rebinding capacity of IINCMs, and contribute to the blended functional pDA@TiO2 microspheres, and the as-prepared IINCMs revealed an outstanding adsorption amount (42.14 mg g−1) and regenerability. In addition, an excellent permselectivity performance (the βketoprofen/ibuprofen and βnaproxen sodium/ibuprofen were 4.42 and 4.46, respectively) could be achieved, which was beneficial for the adsorption and separation of ibuprofen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flexible yolk-shelled NiCo2S4 hollow spheres/reduced graphene oxide (RGO) hybrid lamellar films were successfully fabricated by developing a facile strategy of vacuum filtration. After constructing the sandwich-like structures, the NiCo2S4 hollow spheres were inserted in-between the RGO nanosheets, which effectively prevented the self-restacking of RGO nanosheets and increased the interlayer spacing, leading to fast ion penetration and diffusion. The as-prepared NiCo2S4/2RGO hybrid lamellar films with excellent conductivity delivered an appreciable capacitance of 1000.5 F g−1 at 1 A g−1. Moreover, an asymmetric supercapacitor (ASC) was successfully synthesized utilizing activated carbon (AC) and NiCo2S4/2RGO hybrid lamellar films as the negative electrode and positive electrode, which manifested a high energy density (15.4 W h kg−1) and power density (2227.3 W kg−1) coupled with remarkable cycling stability (80.5% retention over 5000 cycles). After charging, two ASC devices connected in series were capable of lighting two red LEDs connected in parallel for at least 2.0 minutes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Antibiotic pollutants in water have received remarkable attention due to the untold damage to human health and the environment, yet no approach has been used to solve the problem effectively. In this work, novel and efficient norfloxacin-molecularly imprinted composite membranes with an organic–inorganic structure (NFIcMs) were designed and developed using GO/PVDF blended membranes as substrates for selective separation and fast enrichment of norfloxacin from aqueous solution. The selectivity coefficient (α) of NFIcMs was up to 7.35 and more than 1.0, and the permeability factor β values were about 6.0 and more than 1.0, which indicated that the as-prepared NFIcMs possessed outstanding selectivity and permeability. Moreover, the synergistic effects of the specific surface area of GO, fouling resistance of TiO2 and high mechanical strength of PVDF membranes resulted in the fact that NFIcMs had a high adsorption capacity (44.81 mg g−1) for norfloxacin. Additionally, the facile and eco-friendly preparation of the demonstrated NFIcMs rendered them with the application potential in the treatment of antibiotic pollutants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efforts to engineer novel membrane materials with enhanced anti-fouling and comprehensive properties as well as highly selective separation abilities are hampered by the lack of effective imprinted cavities and structure stability. In this work, a novel multi-component metal–organic nanocomposite imprinted membrane (MMO-MIM) has been prepared by integrating a bioinspired metal–organic methodology with the secondary surface sol–gel imprinting technique. The synthesis pathway of MMO-MIM involves two steps: initially, a self-polymerized polydopamine process followed by hydrolysis with ammonium fluotitanate on the surface of the PVDF membrane, a surface-initiated sol–gel imprinted procedure is then conducted on the obtained bio-adhesive nano-sized TiO2 surface system for the fabrication of MMO-MIM. Attributed to the formation of the multilayered membrane structure, stronger fouling resistance and largely enhanced adsorption capacities have been obtained in this case. Meanwhile, the as-prepared MMO-MIM not only exhibits rapid adsorption dynamics, but also possesses excellent separation performance (βMMO-MIM/MMO-NIM and βm-cresol/2,4-DP are higher than 2.6 and 4.0, respectively) of templates. In addition, all synthesis procedures were conducted in aqueous or ethanol solution at ambient temperature, which was environmental friendly for scaling up without causing pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of molecularly imprinted membranes (MIMs) has promoted applications of membrane-based separation technology, which has shown considerable advantages in water treatment, chemical separation and drug purification. Herein, imitated core–shell PEI@SiO2-based enoxacin-imprinted nanocomposite membranes (SPEIMs) were developed by mixing polyethylenimene-modified silica nanoparticles with polyvinylidene fluoride powder under freezing operation. As a typical and hazardous water pollutant, enoxacin was selected as the template molecule. Morphology and chemical characterizations were explored for an insightful analysis of the obtained membranes. Based on the organic–inorganic hybrid strategy, the as-prepared SPEIMs exhibited superior selectivity towards the target (enoxacin). Satisfactory adsorption performance (55.94 mg g−1), permeability (3.22 for norfloxacin/enoxacin and 7.07 for ciprofloxacin/enoxacin) and regeneration performance (90.31%) were achieved onto SPEIMs. The products and methods obtained in this work would potentially enrich the applications of MIMs in pollution control and biochemical separation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a highly stable ratiometric fluorescence probe based on dual-emission quantum dots (QDs) was designed for the visual detection of aspirin. The probe was composed of two differently colored CdTe QDs, in which red-emitting QDs embedded in SiO2 (r-QDs@SiO2) acted as the reference signal and green-emitting QDs (g-QDs) covalently anchored on the surface of r-QDs@SiO2 served as the response signal. The fluorescence of r-QDs@SiO2 remained constant, whereas the fluorescence of g-QDs was quenched by the addition of aspirin. As a result, continuous color changes in the dual-emission fluorescence probe were observed. Under optimum conditions, the as-prepared dual-emission fluorescence probe was used for the determination of aspirin in a concentration range of 6.0–45 μmol L−1 with a detection limit of 0.20 μmol L−1. Furthermore, the present method was successfully applied in the detection of aspirin in real samples with a relatively high stability for about ten days. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]