Engineering Vesicle‐Like Polyamide Nanofiltration Membrane via Interfacial Polymerization on Shear‐Triggered Nanoclay Hydrogel

Abstract Exploiting polyamide membranes with various architectures is highly attractive for improving their nanofiltration performance. However, conventional liquid‐based reaction platforms suffer from limited structural tunability and stability owing to their inherent fluidity, making precise control over the reaction process and the membrane architecture challenging. Herein, a facile strategy employing thixotropic nanoclay hydrogel as an interfacial polymerization platform is proposed to fabricate ultrathin, vesicle‐like polyamide membranes with enhanced nanofiltration performance. The key to this design lies in not only leveraging the shear‐triggered vesicle‐patterned hydrogel as a morphological template for polyamide membranes, but also harnessing nanoclay‐monomer interactions to retard polymerization kinetics for reducing membrane thickness. The prepared membranes exhibit a 41% enhancement in water permeance while maintaining excellent Na 2 SO 4 rejection above 99%, outperforming most commercial membranes and many reported counterparts. Furthermore, the shear‐induced rapid, reversible sol–gel transition allows for the swift construction of uniform, stable, large‐area reaction platforms on various substrates, as well as efficient recovery of reaction media and residual monomers, through a simple blade‐coating process, suggesting its potential for scale‐up. This work establishes a controllable interfacial polymerization platform for modulating polymerization kinetics and morphology of polyamide membranes.