title: A pure inorganic ZnO-Co3O4 overlapped membrane for efficient oil/water emulsions separation.
abstract: The earth's environmental problems, especially for water remediation, need effective methods to solve. Materials with special wettability are developed for the separation of oil/water mixtures. However, the separation of emulsified oil/water mixtures can be a real challenge. There is still much deficiencies, on account of the surfactant, which could link water molecules and oil molecules to form a stabilized system. Here we report a pure inorganic ZnO-Co3O4 overlapped membrane to give a brand new solution to emulsified oil/water mixture separation. Fabricated by an easy and cost-efficient way, such a membrane combines the properties of under-water superoleophobicity and under-oil superhydrophobicity, which can be successfully used for the efficient separation of both surfactant-free and surfactant-stabilized emulsions, solely driven by gravity. This ZnO-Co3O4 overlapped membrane shows great potential applications to industrial wastewater treatment, domestic sewage purification and other water remediation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Na
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Xin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Weifeng
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Yingze
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Yuning
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Feng
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Yen
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wei