An effective strategy on the preparation of the superhydrophobic electrospun nanoparticles/PVDF composite membranes for the oil-water separation

In this work, an effective strategy on the preparation of the superhydrophobic electrospun nanoparticles (NPs)/polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) composite membranes for oil-water separation was developed. The nanofibrous SiO2 NPs, TiO2 NPs, and Fe3O4 NPs/PVDF composite membranes were firstly prepared by the electrospinning technique and then immersed into the trimethoxy (1H,1H,2H,2H-heptadecafluorodecyl) silane (TMHFDS) solution to achieve the superhydrophobicity. Furthermore, the electrospun NPs/PVDF composite membranes after the TMHFDS surface modification were investigated by the Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR), the Wide-angle x-ray diffraction (WAXD), the scanning electron microscope (SEM), the two-dimension element mapping as well as the vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM), and their supehydrophobicities were confirmed by the water contact angle measurement. More importantly, the resultant superhydrophobic electrospun NPs/PVDF composite membranes displayed good oil-water separation ability by the operations of not only the absorption but also the filtration.