Inspired by the bioadhesive ability of the marine mussel, a simple, versatile, and powerful synthesis strategy was developed to prepare highly reproducible and permselective molecular sieve membranes by using polydopamine as a novel covalent linker. Attributing to the formation of strong covalent and noncovalent bonds, ZIF-8 nutrients are attracted and bound to the support surface, thus promoting the ZIF-8 nucleation and the growth of uniform, well intergrown, and phase-pure ZIF-8 molecular sieve membranes. The developed ZIF-8 membranes show high hydrogen selectivity and thermal stability. At 150 °C and 1 bar, the mixture separation factors of H2/CO2, H2/N2, H2/CH4, and H2/C3H8 are 8.9, 16.2, 31.5 and 712.6, with H2 permeances higher than 1.8 × 10(-7) mol·m(-2)·s(-1)·Pa(-1), which is promising for hydrogen separation and purification.

We report a versatile strategy based on the use of multifunctional mussel-inspired polydopamine for constructing well-defined single-nanoparticle@metal-organic framework (MOF) core-shell nanohybrids. The capability of polydopamine to form a robust conformal coating on colloidal substrates of any composition and to direct the heterogeneous nucleation and growth of MOFs makes it possible for customized structural integration of a broad range of inorganic/organic nanoparticles and functional MOFs. Furthermore, the unique redox activity of polydopamine adds additional possibilities to tailor the functionalities of the nanohybrids by sandwiching plasmonic/catalytic metal nanostructures between the core and shell via localized reduction. The core-shell nanohybrids, with the molecular sieving effect of the MOF shell complementing the intrinsic properties of nanoparticle cores, represent a unique class of nanomaterials of considerable current interest for catalysis, sensing, and nanomedicine.