Superelastic and Superhydrophobic Nanofiber-Assembled Cellular Aerogels for Effective Separation of Oil/Water Emulsions

Many applications proposed for functional nanofibers require their assembly into a monolithic cellular structure. The ability to maintain structural integrity upon large deformation is essential to ensure a macroscopic cellular material that functions reliably. However, it remains a great challenge...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:ACS nano 2015-04, Vol.9 (4), p.3791-3799
Main Authors: Si, Yang, Fu, Qiuxia, Wang, Xueqin, Zhu, Jie, Yu, Jianyong, Sun, Gang, Ding, Bin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aerogels
Emulsions
Fibers
Nanofibers
Nanostructure
Separation
Superelasticity
Three dimensional
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Summary:Many applications proposed for functional nanofibers require their assembly into a monolithic cellular structure. The ability to maintain structural integrity upon large deformation is essential to ensure a macroscopic cellular material that functions reliably. However, it remains a great challenge to achieve high elasticity in three-dimensional (3D) nanofibrous networks. Here, we report a strategy to create fibrous, isotropically bonded elastic reconstructed (FIBER) aerogels with a hierarchical cellular structure and superelasticity by combining electrospun nanofibers and the freeze-shaping technique. Our approach allows the intrinsically lamellar deposited electrospun nanofibers to assemble into elastic bulk aerogels with tunable porous structure and wettability on a large scale. The resulting FIBER aerogels exhibit the integrated properties of ultralow density (
ISSN:1936-0851
1936-086X
DOI:10.1021/nn506633b