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Fabrication of ZnO/PDA/GO composite membrane for high efficiency oil–water separation

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Abstract

Zinc oxide/polydopamine nanoparticles/graphene oxide (ZnO/PDA/GO) membranes are fabricated combining chemical and physical methods. In this process, magnetron sputtering is used to deposit ZnO seed layers for further growing uniform and dense ZnO nanorod arrays by hydrothermal method, and then ZnO nanorod arrays is decorated using PDA and GO. The surface morphologies and microstructure characterization indicate that ZnO/PDA/GO membrane with the layered stacked structures is successfully fabricated. Interestingly, ZnO/PDA/GO membrane not only reduced the pore size compared with the original Cu mesh, but also has hydrophilic/underwater superoleophobicity with an underwater oil contact angle higher than 150°. The oil–water separation process driven by gravity shows that the separation efficiency of the membrane for various oil–water mixtures is more than 99%, and it has excellent corrosion resistance and cycle stability. In addition, based on density functional theory (DFT), the double-sided saturated adsorption of water molecules on the model is constructed. The simulation results confirm theoretically that the oil–water separation of underwater superhydrophobic membrane is indeed due to the formation of hydration layer on the membrane surface. These results provides a new idea for the design and development of functional membranes for oil–water separation.

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Acknowledgements

Authors thanks Professor Bing Xiao of Xi’an Jiaotong University for his help in software simulation calculation. This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundations of China (Grant No. 11804273), Key Research and Development Projects of Shaanxi Province (Grant No. 2019GY-170), Graduate Student Innovative and Practical Ability Training Program of Xi’an Shiyou University (Grant No. YCS21111033).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Measurement and Control Technology for Oil and Gas Wells, Shaanxi Engineering Research Center of Oil and Gas Resource Optical Fiber Detection, College of Science, Xi’an Shiyou University, Xi’an, 710065, China

    Jijun Ding, Zhicheng Mao, Haixia Chen, Xin Zhang & Haiwei Fu

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  2. Zhicheng Mao
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Contributions

JD: Conceptualization, Supervision, Methodology. ZM: Data curation, Investigation, Writing- Original draft preparation, Methodology, Software. HC: Visualization, Writing- Reviewing and Editing. XZ: Validation, Data curation. HF: Writing- Reviewing and Editing.

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Correspondence to Jijun Ding.

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Ding, J., Mao, Z., Chen, H. et al. Fabrication of ZnO/PDA/GO composite membrane for high efficiency oil–water separation. Appl. Phys. A 129, 369 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-023-06654-6

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