Antifouling Hydrophilic Electrostatic Spinning PAN Membrane Based on Click Chemistry with High Efficiency Oil-water Separation

With the increasingly serious water pollution and human health problems caused by oily wastewater, the task of developing new and efficient oil-water separation materials is becoming urgent. Electrospun nanofiber membranes have been applied to this field due to their high porosity and uniform pore size, but the preparation and mechanism of hydrophilic nanofiber membranes, which can be used in the part of underwater oleophobicity still need to be explored. Herein, we firstly prepare nanofiber membranes containing sulfhydryl groups on the surface by electrostatic spinning of polyacrylonitrile and γ-mercaptopropyltriethoxysilane together, which becomes active sites for the grafting of dimethyldiallylammonium chloride monomers by thiol-ene click chemistry. The resulting modified membranes exhibited hydrophilicity in air and oleophobicity in water, and demonstrated good emulsion separation performance of extremely high permeation flux (742.6 L/(m 2 ·h)), excellent separation efficiency (>96 %), as well as outstanding antifouling performance thanks to the existence of hydration layer on the membrane when underwater. In addition, the membranes can maintain stable hydrophilicity and underwater oleophobicity in complex environments, and display good acid and alkali resistance.