Facile Fabrication of Amphiphilic and Asymmetric Films with Excellent Deformability for Efficient and Stable Adsorption Applications

Abstract

In this study, a facile way to prepare amphiphilic and asymmetric films with excellent mechanical properties for efficient and stable adsorption applications is reported. Non‐solvent induced phase separation technology is developed to fabricate porous asymmetric poly(ether‐block‐amide) composite films. These films have a unique structure composed of a solid surface, a microporous surface, and hierarchical porous core, hence exhibiting prominent mechanical properties with an elongation at break up to 317% and mechanical resilience. Before and after 50‐times cyclic stretching deformations, they still maintain intact porous structure, and their wetting angles of upper and lower surfaces to both water and cyclohexane are almost constant. Moreover, these films show excellent uptake for cyclohexane and water, and cyclic large deformations have little influence on the performance. It only takes 3 s to absorb 4 times of the weight of cyclohexane, while 1.8 times of water can be loaded within 134 s.