Strong Anchoring of Hydrogels through Superwetting-Assisted High-Density Interfacial Grafting

Strong adhesion of hydrogels on solids plays an important role in stable working for various practical applications. However, current hydrogel adhesion suffers from poor interfacial bonding with solid surfaces. Here, we propose a general superwetting-assisted interfacial polymerization (SAIP) strategy to robustly anchor hydrogels onto solids by forming high-density interfacial covalent bonds. The key of our strategy is to make the initiator fully contact solid surfaces via a superwetting way for enhancing the interfacial grafting efficiency. The designed anchored hydrogels show strong bulk failure with a high breaking strength of ≈1.37 MPa, different from weak interfacial failure that occurs in traditional strategies. The strong interfacial adhesion greatly enhances the stability of hydrogels against swelling destruction. This work opens up new inspirations for designing strongly anchored hydrogels from an interfacial chemistry perspective.

Interfacial Polymerization at the Alkane/Ionic Liquid Interface

Polymerization at the liquid–liquid interface has attracted much attention for synthesizing ultrathin polymer films for molecular sieving. However, it remains a major challenge to conduct this process outside the alkane–water interface since it not only suffers water‐caused side reactions but also is limited to water‐soluble monomers. Here, we report the interfacial polymerization at the alkane/ionic liquid interface (IP@AILI) where the ionic liquid acts as the universal solvent for diversified amines to synthesize task‐specific polyamide nanofilms. We propose that IP@AILI occurs when acyl chloride diffuses from the alkane into the ionic liquid instead of being triggered by the diffusion of amines as in the conventional alkane–water system, which is demonstrated by thermodynamic partitioning and kinetic monitoring. The prepared polyamide nanofilms with precisely adjustable pore sizes display unprecedented permeability and selectivity in various separation processes.