Wrinkled CNTs@PLLA Composite Membranes for Enhanced Separation Performance

To break the trade-off effect between permeability and selectivity in separation, wrinkled carbon nanotubes@polylactic acid (CNTs@PLLA) composite membranes were successfully fabricated in this work. On pre-deformed PLLA membranes, CNTs were loaded by filtrating their suspension, followed by releasing the PLLA upon heating based on its shape memory effect. The asynchronous deformations of CNTs and PLLA layers produced wrinkled CNTs@PLLA composite membranes. Relative to the reference without wrinkles, the attained wrinkled composite membranes exhibit much higher flux (~12 times) without any loss of rejection ratio during the separation of water-in-hexadecane emulsion. The significant improvement of separation performance can be attributed to the following issues: Firstly, the existence of wrinkles results in higher surface roughness, providing an additional driving force for separation resulting from the enlarged contact-angle difference between water and oil; Secondly, the shrinkage of the supporting PLLA layer during recovery induces the preferred alignment of CNTs along the wrinkle direction, which is the reason for the orientated slit pores with enhanced overlap of neighboring pores in the film-thickness direction; Finally, a wrinkled surface significantly increases the available area for separation. The synergism of the effects discussed above contributes to much higher permeability and comparable selectivity relative to the reference.