Oil spills and industrial organic pollutants have induced severe water pollution and threatened every species in the ecological system. To deal with oily water, special wettability stimulated materials have been developed over the past decade to separate oil-and-water mixtures. Basically, synergy between the surface chemical composition and surface topography are commonly known as the key factors to realize the opposite wettability to oils and water and dominate the selective wetting or absorption of oils/water. In this review, we mainly focus on the development of materials with either super-lyophobicity or super-lyophilicity properties in oil/water separation applications where they can be classified into four kinds as follows (in terms of the surface wettability of water and oils): (i) superhydrophobic and superoleophilic materials, (ii) superhydrophilic and under water superoleophobic materials, (iii) superhydrophilic and superoleophobic materials, and (iv) smart oil/water separation materials with switchable wettability. These materials have already been applied to the separation of oil-and-water mixtures: from simple oil/water layered mixtures to oil/water emulsions (including oil-in-water emulsions and water-in-oil emulsions), and from non-intelligent materials to intelligent materials. Moreover, they also exhibit high absorption capacity or separation efficiency and selectivity, simple and fast separation/absorption ability, excellent recyclability, economical efficiency and outstanding durability under harsh conditions. Then, related theories are proposed to understand the physical mechanisms that occur during the oil/water separation process. Finally, some challenges and promising breakthroughs in this field are also discussed. It is expected that special wettability stimulated oil/water separation materials can achieve industrial scale production and be put into use for oil spills and industrial oily wastewater treatment in the near future.

Biomimetic super-lyophobic and super-lyophilic materials applied for oil/water separation: a new strategy beyond nature

The separation of oil from oily water is an important pursuit because of increasing worldwide oil pollution. Separation by the use of materials with selective oil/water absorption is a relatively recent area of development, yet highly promising. Owing to their selective superantiwetting/superwetting properties towards water and oil, superhydrophobic/superoleophilic surfaces and underwater superoleophobic surfaces have been developed for the separation of oil/water-free mixtures and emulsions. In this Review, after a short introduction to oil/water separation, we describe the principles of materials with selective oil/water absorption and outline recent advances in oil/water separation with superwetting/superantiwetting materials, including their design, their fabrication, and models of experimental setups. Finally, we discuss the current state of this new field and point out the remaining problems and future challenges.

Oil/Water Separation with Selective Superantiwetting/Superwetting Surface Materials

This paper gives a comprehensive review about the most recent progress in synthesis, characterization, fundamental understanding, and the performance of graphene and graphene oxide sponges. Practical applications are considered including use in composite materials, as the electrode materials for electrochemical sensors, as absorbers for both gases and liquids, and as electrode materials for devices involved in electrochemical energy storage and conversion. Several advantages of both graphene and graphene oxide sponges such as three dimensional graphene networks, high surface area, high electro/thermo conductivities, high chemical/electrochemical stability, high flexibility and elasticity, and extremely high surface hydrophobicity are emphasized. To facilitate further research and development, the technical challenges are discussed, and several future research directions are also suggested in this paper.

A review of graphene and graphene oxide sponge: material synthesis and applications to energy and the environment

Oil/water separation is a field of high significance as it has direct practical implications for resolving the problem of industrial oily wastewater and other oil/water pollution. Therefore, the development of functional materials for efficient treatment of oil-polluted water is imperative. In this feature article, we have reviewed the recent progress of oil/water separation technologies based on filtration and absorption methods using various materials that possess surface superwetting properties. In each section, we present in detail representative work and describe the concepts, employed materials, fabrication methods, and the effects of their wetting/dewetting behaviors on oil/water separation. Finally, the challenges and future research directions of this promising research field are briefly discussed.

Oil/water separation techniques: a review of recent progresses and future directions

Carbon-based aerogels, composed of interconnected threedimensional (3D) networks, have attracted intensive attention because of their unique physical properties, such as low density, high electrical conductivity, porosity, and specific surface area. As a result, carbon-based aerogels are promising materials used as catalyst supports, artificial muscles, electrodes for supercapacitors, absorbents, and gas sensors. Especially, ultralight or flexible carbon-based aerogels have many potential applications. For example, ultralight nitrogen-doped graphene framework, used as an absorbent for organic liquids or the active electrode material, exhibits a high absorption capacity and specific capacitance; stretchable conductors, fabricated by infiltrating flexible graphene foam with elastic polymers, show high stability of electronic conductivity even under high stretching and bending strain. Traditionally, to fabricate carbon aerogels, resorcinol– formaldehyde organic aerogels were pyrolyzed in an inert atmosphere to form a highly cross-linked carbon structure. 12] The carbon aerogels always have a high density (100–800 mgcm ) 13] and tend to break under compression. Carbon nanotube (CNT) sponges, graphene foam, and CNT forests have been prepared through chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Meanwhile, CNTs and graphene can be employed as building blocks and assembled into macroscopic 3D architectures. However, the harmful and expensive precursors or complex equipments involved in these syntheses dramatically hamper the large-scale production of these carbon-based aerogels for industry application. Recently, we have developed a template-directed hydrothermal carbonization process for synthesis of carbonaceous nanofiber hydrogels/aerogels on macroscopic scale by using glucose as precursors. However, the use of expensive nanowire templates in this synthesis pushes us to explore a facile, economic, and environmentally friendly method to produce carbon-based nanostructured aerogels. Nowadays, there is a trend to produce carbon-based materials from biomass materials, as they are very cheap, easy to obtain, and nontoxic to humans, etc. Bacterial cellulose (BC), a typical biomass material, is composed of interconnected networks of cellulose nanofibers, 22] and can be produced in large amounts in a microbial fermentation process. Recently, we reported a highly conductive and stretchable conductor, fabricated from BC, shows great electromechanical stability under stretching and bending strain. Herein, we report a facile route to produce ultralight, flexible, and fire-resistant carbon nanofiber (CNF) aerogels in large scale from BC pellicles. When used as absorbents, the CNF aerogels can absorb a wide range of organic solvents and oils with excellent recyclability and selectivity. The absorption capacity can reach up to 310 times the weight of the pristine CNF aerogels. Besides, the electrical conductivity of the CNF aerogel is highly sensitive to the compressive strain, thereby making it a potential pressure-sensing material. For fabricating the CNF aerogels, a piece of purified BC pellicle with the size of 320 240 12 mm was first cut into rectangular or cubic shape and then freeze-dried to form BC aerogels (see the Supporting Information). The dried BC aerogels were pyrolyzed at 700–1300 8C under argon atmosphere to generate black and ultralight CNF aerogels. After pyrolysis, the volume of obtained CNF aerogel is only 15% of that of the original BC aerogel. Meanwhile, the density decreases from 9–10 mg cm 3 for BC aerogels to 4–6 mgcm 3 for CNF aerogels, owing to evaporation of volatile species. The macroscopic sizes of the as-synthesized CNF aerogels are dependent on the sizes of the BC pellicles cut in the fabrication procedure. It is well-known that temperature has a great influence on pyrolysis products. To create ideal CNF aerogels, BC aerogels were pyrolyzed separately at different temperatures. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images show that BC aerogels exhibit a porous, interconnected, well-organized 3D network structure, which was formed through self-assembly in the bacteria culture process (Figure 1a). A high-magnification SEM image indicates that the nanofibers with a diameter of 20–80 nm are highly interconnected with large numbers of junctions (see the Supporting Information, Figure S1). After the pyrolysis treatment, the porous 3D structure of BC aerogels was maintained, and the diameter of the nanofibers decreased to 10–20 nm (Figure 1b, also see the Supporting [*] Z. Y. Wu, C. Li, Dr. H. W. Liang, Prof. Dr. J. F. Chen, Prof. Dr. S. H. Yu Division of Nanomaterials and Chemistry, Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, Department of Chemistry, CAS Key Laboratory of Mechanical Behavior and Design of Materials, the National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China Hefei, Anhui 230026 (P.R. China) E-mail: shyu@ustc.edu.cn Homepage: http://staff.ustc.edu.cn/~ yulab/

Ultralight, flexible, and fire-resistant carbon nanofiber aerogels from bacterial cellulose.

Superhydrophobic and superoleophilic hybrid foam of graphene and carbon nanotube for selective removal of oils or organic solvents from the surface of water

Synthesis of high-performance graphene nanosheets by thermal reduction of graphene oxide

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Superhydrophobic and superoleophilic hybrid foam of graphene and carbon nanotube for selective removal of oils or organic solvents from the surface of water

Synthesis of high-performance graphene nanosheets by thermal reduction of graphene oxide