Electrospinning Oriented Self‐Cleaning Porous Crosslinking Polymer for Efficient Dyes Removal

The separation of harmful substances by supramolecular crosslinking polymers is the focus of current research. As far as it is known, supramolecular crosslinking systems based on electrospun nanofibers are rarely reported. However, electrospun nanofibers should be promising candidates for interfacial crosslinking substrates because of their adjustable morphology and can be doped with different functional nanoparticles. In this study, beta-cyclodextrin and acyl chloride compounds are interfacially polymerized on polyacrylonitrile electrospun nanofibrous substrates with different morphologies. The diameter and orientation of electrospun nanofibrous substrates affect the dye-filtration efficiency, with a porous membrane composed of aligned nanofibers giving the highest efficiency. Cationic dyes can be selectively filtered from mixtures of cationic and anionic dyes, and the porous supramolecular crosslinking polymers are also suitable for mixtures of various cationic dyes. When TiO(2)is present in the nanofibrous substrate, UV irradiation of the used porous composite membranes efficiently in situ degrade the absorbed dye, making the membranes self-cleaning and thus reusable.