MnO2-x nanowires on carbon cloth based superamphiphilic and under-oil superhydrophilic filtration membrane for oil/water separation with robust anti-oil fouling performance

Filtration membranes (FMs), with robust anti-fouling performance, are highly desirable for practical oily wastewater purification but still a challenge to be realized without water pre-wetting procedure. Herein, we demonstrate a novel and effective route to address this challenge by decorating MnO 2-x nanowires on carbon cloth membrane (MCM) via simple hydrothermal method , in which the existence of oxygen vacancies on the outer surface of MnO 2-x nanowires can greatly enhance the H 2 O adsorption capacity even under oil, thus the oil-fouling problem can be solved by simply immersing the oil-polluted membrane into water and shaking. Besides the superamphiphilic performance in air and underwater superoleophobic (underwater oil contact angle > 155° against diverse oils), our MCM also exhibits unexpected under-oil superhydrophilic properties, Moreover, high separation efficiency for diverse oil/water mixtures (>99.8%) and oil-in-water emulsions (>98.3%) have been also achieved based on our product. These outstanding properties make our sample hold a great potential in practical oily/water purification.