Enhanced superhydrophobicity of electrospun carbon nanofiber membranes by hydrothermal growth of ZnO nanorods for oil-water separation

Development of electrospun nanofiber membranes with the selective wettability charac-teristics for effectively separating oil-water mixtures is an extremely advisable strategy. In this study, a superhydrophobic electrospinning carbon nanofiber (F/ZnO/CNF) membrane was success-fully prepared by electrospinning and in-situ growth of ZnO, and subsequent fluorination reaction with 1H, 1H, 2H, 2H-perfluorooctyltriethoxysilane (POTS). Benefiting from the influence of needle -like nanostructure and low surface energy, the as-prepared F/ZnO/CNF membrane shows excellent superhydrophobicity. When the growth duration of ZnO is 3 h, the obtained F/ZnO/CNF-3 mem-brane possesses outstanding water contact angle (WCA, 159.7 degrees) and splendid oil-water separation efficiency (>99 %). Meanwhile, due to its the superior environmental stability the obtained F/ZnO/ CNF-3 membrane exhibits excellent low and high temperature resistance, and enhanced resistance to various organic solvents in the face of a series of harsh environments.(c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).