Tunable Ionic Liquid-Water Separation Enabled by Bioinspired Superwetting Porous Gel Membranes

Selectively wettable porous membranes have been demonstrated to be outstanding energy-efficient materials for use in continuous liquid separation (including separating industrial oils or common organic solvents), in environmental protection, and in the chemical industry. The continuous separation of ionic liquids (ILs), which is important for chemical synthesis and chemical engineering, has been less explored. Herein, we report an on-demand liquid-passed-through strategy for the efficient and continuous separation of ILs from their aqueous solutions via the utilization of bioinspired liquid-infused porous gel membranes. We show how a porous gel film can be used to design functional membranes for reliable separation that is independent of the surface energies of the separated liquids. This tunable IL-water separation strategy can further enable highly efficient and continuous purification and recycling of ILs for use in IL-related chemical processes and is promising for scalable processes.