In-situ growth of silver nanoparticles on sulfonated polyarylene ether nitrile nanofibers as super-wetting antibacterial oil/water separation membranes

Super-wetting nanofibrous membrane showing anti-microbial feature is considered as a promising candidate to resolve the longstanding fouling issues of emulsified oil/water separation. Herein, we have synthesized a super -engineering polyarylene ether containing pendent nitrile and sulfonate groups (sPEN). Furthermore, the syn-thesized sPEN has been converted into electrospun nanofibers, on which the silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) of different sizes have been covalently immobilized to prepare the composited Ag@sPEN nanofibrous membranes (NFM). Detailed experimental results indicate that the in-situ growth Ag NPs not only enhances the thermal and mechanical properties of sPEN matrix, but also renders the sPEN-based NFM with desired surface wettability of hydrophilic/underwater super-hydrophobic as well as strong anti-bacterial effects towards both gram-positive and gram-negative strains. As the consequence, the optimized Ag@sPEN NFM exhibits a high flux of 3597 +/- 212 L m-2 h-1 under a pressure difference of 0.09 MPa for separation of surfactant-stabilized oil-in-water emulsion. More importantly, the emulsion flux and efficiency of optimized NFM remain above 3000 L m-2 h-1 and 99% even after 20 cycles of separation due to its mechanical stability as well as anti-fouling features. Thanks to the facile fabrication and good oil-water separation performance, the current work would open a new way for design of nanofibrous membranes for environmental remediation.