Oleophobic interaction mediated slippery organogels with ameliorated mechanical performance and satisfactory fouling-resistance

Owing to their inherent semi-solid property and lubricant ability,organogels manifest various unique characteristics and serve as promising candidates for antifouling.However,the poor mechanical properties of organogels often limit their practical applications.Herein,we report a simple and effective method to prepare organogels with reinforced mechanical performance and surface lubricant ability with the synergistic roles played by oleophobic and oleophilic chains.The rigid oleophobic chains have a poor affinity to lubricating solvent,which gives rise to high oleophobic interactions between polymer networks;the soft oleophilic chains possess a high affinity to the low surface energy solvent,which lead to high solvent content to maintain the satisfactory lubricant capacity.The organogel of oleophobic methyl methacrylate(MMA)and oleophilic lauryl methacrylate(LMA)is chosen as a representative example to illustrate this concept.With the optimal composition,the as-prepared organogels offer satisfactory tensile fracture stress,fracture strain,Young’s modulus,toughness,and tearing fracture energy of 480 k Pa,550%,202 k Pa,1.14 MJ m,and 5.14 k J m,respectively,which are far beyond the classical PLMA organogels.Furthermore,the biofouling resistance tests demonstrate 4 to 9-fold reduction of protein and bacteria adhesion on the reinforced organogels surface in comparison to the glass substrate and solvent-free dry organogels.This simple and effective approach to toughen organogels,we hope,can be applied in various fields with different practical functional requirements in the future.

Fouling-resistant Composite Membranes for Separation of Oil-in-water Microemulsions

Fouling-resistant ceramic-supported polymer composite membranes were developed for removal of oil-in-water （O/W） mieroemulsions. The composite membranes were featured with an asymmetric three-layer structure, i.e., a porous ceramic membrane substrate, a polyvinylidene fluoride （PVDF） ultrafiltration sub-layer, and a polyamide/polyvinyl alcohol （PVA） composite thin top-layer. The PVDF polymer was east onto the tubular porous ceramic membranes with an immersion precipitation method, and the polyamide/PVA composite thin top-layer was fabricated with an inteffaeial polymerization method. The effects of the sub-layer composition and the recipe in the inteffaeial polymerization for fabricating the top-layer on the structure and performance of composite membranes were systematically investigated. The prepared composite membranes showed a good performance for treating the O/W microemulsions with a mean diameter of about 2.41μm. At the operating pressure of 0.4MPa, the hydraulic permeability remained steadily about 190L·m^-2·h^-1, the oil concentration in the permeate was less than 1.6mg·L^-1, and the oil rejection coefficient was always higher than 98.5% throughout the operation from the beginning.