Poly(vinylidene fluoride) resin functionalized with thiourea groups was made into porous membranes for trace amount of Au(III) recovery with high selectivity and efficiency. Thiosemicarbazide was grafted on the backbones of the resin by nucleophilic addition reaction first, membranes were then fabricated by non-solvent induced phase separation method. Membrane morphology was controlled by 2-stage coagulation such that an open porous structure was developed for high flux. Gold was recovered from aqueous solutions by filtration with a stack of such membranes prepared. The maximum gold uptake was 17.2 mg/g when the feed gold concentration was 2 mg/L. The breakthrough point of the membrane was not significantly influenced by pH and flow rate, indicating the tendency of easy process scaling up. Gold can even be selectively adsorbed by the membrane from a solution containing gold, 10 times concentrated copper and ferric irons. The separated gold can be easily eluted from the membrane with a solution containing 0.1 M thiourea and 1 M HCl. Furthermore, the membrane was shown to be able to recover gold from both industrial wastewater and tap water. And finally, the adsorption mechanism was studied based on X-ray photoelectron spectrophotometry analyses. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.