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Oil–water separation is critical for the water treatment of oily wastewater or oil-spill accidents. The oil contamination in water not only induces severe water pollution but also threatens human beings’ health and all living species in the ecological system. To address this challenge, different nanoscale fabrication methods have been applied for endowing biomimetic porous materials, which provide a promising solution for oily-water remediation. In this review, we present the state-of-the-art developments in the rational design of materials interface with special wettability for the intelligent separation of immiscible/emulsified oil–water mixtures. A mechanistic understanding of oil–water separation is firstly described, followed by a summary of separation solutions for traditional oil–water mixtures and special oil–water emulsions enabled by self-amplified wettability due to nanostructures. Guided by the basic theory, the …