The control of the membrane surface and cross-section morphology is extremely important in the enhancement of the wicking and binding ability of the lateral flow membrane, which is one of the processing materials in medicine and health care analysis devices. The lateral flow rate and protein-binding performance is based on the thin layers of the membrane. The challenge of this study was to combine the influences of additives and pore-former materials to obtain a thin lateral flow nitrocellulose membrane with controlled membrane morphologies. Water was found to be an effective pore former for enhancing the porosity and pore size of the membrane. However, too high of a water content increased the surface roughness and decreased the membrane protein-binding ability. Different properties of the individual plasticizers/additives contributed to the disparity of membrane performance in binding and solute lateral wicking time. The correlations between the effects of additives and pore former toward the final membrane structure and performance of the membrane-forming system are discussed extensively. (C) 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.