Many fouling-resistant materials have been grafted or coated on the RO membrane surface for fouling-resistance. However, these modified RO membranes still exhibit a fast flux drop towards small charged organic foulants. Herein, we creatively use the quantum chemistry method to screen the thiol group having a close to zero interaction energy with small charged organic foulants. Thus, we selected a small molecule of 2-aminoethanethiol (AET) having a fouling-resistant thiol group and a reactive amine group for RO membrane surface modification. The water permeance of the AET-grafted RO membrane increases from 2.6 ± 0.1 L m⁻² h⁻¹ bar⁻¹ to 3.2 ± 0.05 L m⁻² h⁻¹ bar⁻¹, 23% higher than that of the pristine membrane. Moreover, the AET-grafted RO membrane exhibits excellent fouling resistance against charged surfactants. Our study offers insights on the design of fouling-resistant molecules for antifouling surface modification of RO membranes towards small charged organic foulants.

RO膜表面接枝或涂覆多种防垢材料以达到防垢目的。然而，这些改性反渗透膜仍然表现出对小带电有机污染物的通量快速下降。在此，我们创造性地利用量子化学方法筛选了与小带电有机污染物相互作用能接近于零的硫醇基团。因此，我们选择了具有防垢硫醇基和反应性胺基的小分子2-氨基乙硫醇（AET）用于RO膜表面改性。 AET接枝的RO膜的水渗透率从2.6 ± 0.1 L m ^-2  h ^-1 bar ^-1增加到3.2 ± 0.05 L m ^-2  h ^-1  bar ^-1，比原始膜高23%。此外，AET接枝的RO膜对带电表面活性剂表现出优异的抗污染能力。我们的研究为防污分子的设计提供了见解，用于针对小带电有机污染物对反渗透膜进行防污表面改性。