Fabrication and evaluation of bioinspired pDA@TiO2-based ibuprofen-imprinted nanocomposite membranes for highly selective adsorption and separation applications

Abstract

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 β_{ketoprofen/ibuprofen} and β_{naproxen sodium/ibuprofen} were 4.42 and 4.46, respectively) could be achieved, which was beneficial for the adsorption and separation of ibuprofen.