Magnetron sputtering in membrane fabrication and modification: Applications in gas and water treatment

Magnetron-sputtered membranes have been an interesting candidate for water and gas treatment applications because of their controllable thickness, chemical compositions, crystalline structure, and other surface properties. Using magnetron sputtering (MS) as a reproducible and scalable deposition technique, membranes can be directed fabricated or modified through deposition of a thin layer on a support layer. The fundamental concepts, detailed processing mechanism, and various types of this technique are first outlined. Then, the applications of this technique in depositing thin films, mainly originating from polymers, metal(loid)s, oxides, and carbon, on membrane supports are briefly discussed. The next focus is on recent progress in this field by reporting the performance of MS-based developed membranes in both water and gas treatment processes, which provides a comparative study in terms of filtration efficiency. Finally, the current challenges and future directions are briefly provided for the development of next-generation magnetron-sputtered membranes.