Smart nanofibrous membranes with controllable porous structure and surface wettability for high efficient separation materials

Abstract

High-performance separation materials head one of the top materials facing the future environmental issues such as liquid-air separation, oil spill cleanup, and oil-water separation. Nanotechnology is responding to these challenges by designing and fabricating functional nanofibrous membranes optimized for separation applications. The route toward such nano-objects is based primarily on electrospinning, a highly versatile method that allows the fabrication of continuous fibers with diameters down to a few nanometers. This chapter focuses on the recent progress on the electrospun nanofibrous membranes for high efficient separation applications. Nanofibers with complex architectures, such as adhesion structure, porous structure, core-shell structure, and bio-inspired structure, have been fabricated by special electrospinning methods. By the introduction of low surface energy materials such as fluorinated polyurethane and polybenzoxazine, the pristine nanofibers were endowed with promising superwettability, which significantly boosted the separation selectivity and efficiency. And nanoparticles such as SiO2 and Al2O3 were used to create functional membranes with hierarchical structures, thus further improving the separation performance. Furthermore, the demonstration of electrospun nanofibers used for advanced separation applications has indicated that their impact has been realized well and is encouraging and will continually represent a key technology to ensure sustainable environment and human lives for the future.