The rising demand for clean water for a growing and increasingly urban global population is one of the most urgent issues of our time. Here, we introduce the synthesis of a unique nanoscale architecture of pillar-like Co-CAT-1 metal–organic framework (MOF) crystallites on gold-coated woven stainless steel meshes with large, 50 μm apertures. These nanostructured mesh surfaces feature superhydrophilic and underwater superoleophobic wetting properties, allowing for gravity-driven, highly efficient oil–water separation featuring water fluxes of up to nearly one million L m−2 h−1. Water physisorption experiments reveal the hydrophilic nature of Co-CAT-1 with a total water vapor uptake at room temperature of 470 cm3 g−1. Semiempirical molecular orbital calculations shed light on water affinity of the inner and outer pore surfaces. The MOF-based membranes enable high separation efficiencies for a number of liquids tested, including the notorious water pollutant, crude oil, affording chemical oxygen demand (COD) concentrations below 25 mg L−1 of the effluent. Our results demonstrate the great impact of suitable nanoscale surface architectures as a means of encoding on-surface extreme wetting properties, yielding energy-efficient water-selective large-aperture membranes.
CITATION STYLE
Mähringer, A., Hennemann, M., Clark, T., Bein, T., & Medina, D. D. (2021). Energy Efficient Ultrahigh Flux Separation of Oily Pollutants from Water with Superhydrophilic Nanoscale Metal–Organic Framework Architectures. Angewandte Chemie - International Edition, 60(10), 5519–5526. https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202012428
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