Scalable weaving of resilient membranes with on-demand superwettability for high-performance nanoemulsion separations
Yangyang Wang, Luis Francisco Villalobos, Lijun Liang, Bo Zhu, Jian Li, Chen Chen, Yunxiang Bai, Chunfang Zhang, Liangliang Dong, Quan‐Fu An, Hong Meng, Yue Zhao, Menachem Elimelech
Abstract
This study leverages the ancient craft of weaving to prepare membranes that can effectively treat oil/water mixtures, specifically challenging nanoemulsions. Drawing inspiration from the core-shell architecture of spider silk, we have engineered fibers, the fundamental building blocks for weaving membranes, that feature a mechanically robust core for tight weaving, coupled with a CO 2 -responsive shell that allows for on-demand wettability adjustments. Tightly weaving these fibers produces membranes with ideal pores, achieving over 99.6% separation efficiency for nanoemulsions with droplets as small as 20 nm. They offer high flux rates, on-demand self-cleaning, and can switch between sieving oil and water nanodroplets through simple CO 2 /N 2 stimulation. Moreover, weaving can produce sufficiently large membranes (4800 cm 2 ) to assemble a module that exhibits long-term stability and performance, surpassing state-of-the-art technologies for nanoemulsion separations, thus making industrial application a practical reality.