Unlike biofoulants/pollutants, oil foulants/pollutants are prone to coalesce, spread and migrate to form continuous fouling layer covering on the surfaces. Therefore, such kind of fouling can not be simply alleviated by hydrophilic modification with currently extensively used antifouling materials such as poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)‐based or zwitterionic polymers etc. In the present study, an amphiphilic porous membrane surface, comprising hydrophilic fouling resistant domains and hydrophobic fouling release microdomains, is explored via a "forced surface segregation" approach. The resultant membranes exhibit both superior oil‐fouling and bio‐fouling resistant property: membrane fouling is exquisitely suppressed and the permeation flux‐decline is decreased to an ultralow level. It can be envisaged that the present study may open a novel avenue to the design and construction of robust, versatile antifouling surfaces.

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In the present study, a facile in situ approach for constructing tunable amphiphilic or hydrophilic antifouling membrane surfaces was demonstrated by exquisitely manipulating the microphase separation and surface segregation behavior of the tailor-made ternary amphiphilic block copolymers during the commonly utilized wet phase inversion membrane-formation process. Under dead-end filtration for oily wastewater treatment, the membrane with amphiphilic surface exhibited over 99.5% retention ratio of chemical oxygen demand (COD) without appreciable membrane fouling: the water permeation flux was slightly decreased during operation (total flux decline was 6.8%) and almost completely recovered to the initial value (flux recovery ratio was more than 99.0%) after simple hydraulic washing. While for the proteins-containing wastewater treatment, the membrane with hydrophilic surface exhibited about 52.6% COD retention ratio and superior antifouling performance: only 17.0% total flux decline and also more than 99.0% flux recovery ratio. Hopefully, the present approach can be developed as a competitive platform technology for the preparation of robust and versatile antifouling membrane, leading to the high process efficiency of wastewater treatments.

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