Bifunctional polyimide/ZIF8 composite nanofibrous membranes with controllable bilayer structure for bioprotective application and high-efficiency oil/water separation

A multi-use fibrous filter medium composed of an electrospun polyimide (PI) nanofiber layer and a functional zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF8) nanofilm layer was successfully fabricated to cope with the complex environmental pollution issues. The nanofilm layer consists of the anti-microbial ZIF8 converted from non-toxic zinc oxide (ZnO) nanocoating on PI fibers. One-step magnetron sputtering is utilized to deposit the ZnO nanocoating for the sake of desired functionality conformally onto the PI nanofibrous membrane without sacrificing its bulk structure and mechanical performance. The as-prepared PI/ZIF8 nanofibrous filter medium showed conspicuous biocidal efficacy and excellent interception ratio against gram-negative Escherichia coli (>99.9%) and gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus (>99.9%) within 20 min contact. Besides, compared with commercial media, the bilayer PI/ZIF8 fibrous medium showed exceptional thermal-wet comfortability due to the high porosity that could realize effective heat and humidity conduction. Moreover, the PI/ZIF830 NFM still present a high filtration efficiency of 99.6% towards PM0.3 even after treated at 300 °C for 1 h. Furthermore, the PI/ZIF830 NFM with a fiber basis weight of 1.8 g/m2 was endowed with a permeate flux of 17,279.2 L/m2/h and a high oil/water separation efficiency of > 99.6% because of the hydrophobicity and superoleophilicity. We envision that the antimicrobial, thermal-wet comfort, multi-use fibrous membrane will serve as a core-medium of environmentally-friendly platform for bioprotective equipment against future pathogen threats or oily wastewater treatment.