Digitizing the Filtration Interface: A Smart, Modular Janus Wood Platform for Self‐Reporting Oil/Water Remediation

Efficient and intelligent membranes that can overcome the inherent trade‐off between flux and selectivity while providing real‐time process monitoring are highly desirable for advanced oil/water separation. This work reported a smart conductive Janus wood membrane (CJW) that integrated high‐efficiency oil/water separation with in situ real‐time monitoring. A bio‐inspired modular design strategy fully exploited wood's natural anisotropy: transverse wood with vertically aligned macrochannels acted as a high‐flux transport layer, while longitudinal wood with an inherent micro/nano‐capillary network served as a high‐precision sieving layer. Asymmetric wettability was established by grafting hydrophilic poly(DMAEMA) on one side and immobilizing hydrophobic fluorosilane‐modified nano‐SiO 2 on the other side. A continuous GO/PPy conductive network distributed throughout the hierarchical pores enabled in situ electrical sensing during separation. The resulting membrane achieved separation efficiencies > 93.1% over 30 cycles for immiscible oil/water mixtures, with a maximum flux of 8001 L/m 2 ·h. For oil/water emulsions, efficiencies remained > 92.3% after 10 cycles with sustained fluxes of 540‐760 L/m 2 ·h. The electrical response of the conductive network provided real‐time feedback on membrane status. Additionally, a threshold‐based early‐warning mechanism using the coefficient of variation (CV) of resistance predicted degradation 3‐18 cycles in advance. This work presents a novel paradigm for intelligent separation materials with self‐monitoring capabilities.