Issue 34, 2019

Observation of osmotically driven, highly controllable and reconfigurable oil/water phase separation

Abstract

Liquid–liquid phase separation has been proven to be a valuable method for producing structured materials and creating chemical systems. Although several strategies have been developed to date, osmotically driven oil/water phase separation has never been achieved owing to the limited solubility of inorganic salts in conventional organic solvents and thus the insufficient osmotic driving force to counterbalance the Laplace pressure associated with the interfacial tension. Herein, we report the discovery that a mixture of 1-alkyl-3-vinylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide and LiTf2N can generate sufficient and widely tunable osmotic pressure in oil to realize water transport from the surrounding aqueous phase into the oil phase, triggering spontaneous phase separation. This osmotically driven phase separation could be modulated with unprecedented flexibility, offering unlimited possibilities to facilely access diverse thermodynamically metastable structures using one system. Importantly, this oil system can serve as a general phase separation carrier platform for realizing phase separation of various substances.

Graphical abstract: Observation of osmotically driven, highly controllable and reconfigurable oil/water phase separation

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
03 avr. 2019
Accepted
21 juin 2019
First published
21 juin 2019
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Chem. Sci., 2019,10, 7887-7897

Observation of osmotically driven, highly controllable and reconfigurable oil/water phase separation

N. Gao, J. Cui, W. Zhang, K. Feng, Y. Liang, S. Wang, P. Wang, K. Zhou and G. Li, Chem. Sci., 2019, 10, 7887 DOI: 10.1039/C9SC01649J

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