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

Abstract

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 synthesized 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.