Superantiwetting Materials
The separation of oil from oily water is an important pursuit because of increasing worldwide oil pollution. Separation by the use of materials with selective oil/water absorption is a relatively recent area of development, yet highly promising. Owing to their selective superantiwetting/superwetting properties towards water and oil, superhydrophobic/superoleophilic surfaces and underwater superoleophobic surfaces have been developed for the separation of oil/water-free mixtures and emulsions. Our group have developed superantiwetting membranes with different methods, click Chemistry for example, on different substrates, such as sand and textiles, for oil/water separation of in different conditions including separating oil-in-water and water-in-oil emulsions at the same time and oil/water at high temperature.
Representative publications
- Wenting Zhou; Fan Min; Jing Shi; Deqi Wang; Haikang Huang; Hengchang Liu; Zonglin Chu, High temperature oil–water separation based on superwettable membranes for removing water from condensation reactions, J. Mater. Chem. A 2023, 11, 13231-13237.
Smart Materials
The crafting of intelligent materials that dynamically alter their structures and properties on demand or in response to environmental changes, and particularly those that can be switched between an ‘on’ and ‘off’ state, has been a major scientific focus of the past decade. Our research group is dedicated to the entire process, from the design of functional molecules to the construction of functional materials. We synthesize functional materials with responses to light, pH, heat, and other stimuli, according to different needs.
