Inorganic nanosheet-engineered ceramic membranes with tunable pore structures for monodisperse and stable emulsions

Porous ceramic membranes have gained increasing attention for emulsion preparation. However, the limited and challenging-to-control distances between adjacent pores often lead to droplet coalescence, resulting in emulsions with large sizes, wide distributions, and poor stability. Here, leveraging 2D Ti₃C₂T_x and TiO₂ sol as platforms, we present a novel and scalable strategy for designing ceramic membranes with enlarged and tunable pore distances, specifically optimized for emulsification. By laying Ti₃C₂T_x nanosheets into TiO₂ sol particles to form partitions, the uniform stacking of TiO₂ particles is disrupted, thereby increasing the pore spacing and minimizing emulsion aggregation. The adjacent pore distances (0.5–2.2 μm) can be precisely tuned by regulating the Ti₃C₂T_x nanosheet dimensions, achieving pore distances up to seven times larger than the TiO₂ particle size, surpassing conventional ceramic membranes. Consequently, using the engineered TiO₂–Ti₃C₂T_x membranes and a dual-surfactant system (Span 85/Tween 80), we successfully prepared size-tunable (average particle size: 1.44–2.59 μm), monodisperse (span: 0.73–1.2) water-in-bio-heavy oil emulsions with exceptional stability (up to 2 months), showing substantial improvements in droplet size and uniformity compared to previously reported systems. This approach offers an effective and scalable method for fabricating emulsification-functional ceramic membranes with easily adjustable pore structures, advancing the development of high-performance membrane materials for a variety of emulsification applications.