By YU Jihong's Group

The synthesis and utilization of multifunctional inorganic porous materials are the active research areas of Prof. Jihong Yu. Recently, Prof. Yu and her coworkers have developed a facial and universal strategy based on the infused liquid to modulate the surface tension (ST) of material’s surface.  The superamphiphilic nanoporous fibrous membranes preferentially interact with liquid with high polar component of surface energy, forming a relatively stable liquid-infusion-interface (LII) to repel the immiscible low polar component of surface energy liquid.  Even immiscible liquids with a surface energy difference as small as 2mJm−2, or emulsions stabilized by emulsifiers can be effectively separated. The infused liquid can be substituted by another immiscible liquid with a higher polar component of surface energy, affording successive separation of multiphase liquids. Thanks to these distinctive characteristics, the infused-liquid-switchable wetting behavior of membranes opens new perspectives for the applications of liquid separation in environment protection and chemical industry. The representative work was published in Nature Communications in September 2017 (Nature Communications, 2017. 8, 575).