Designing preferable functional materials based on the secondary reactions of the hierarchical tannic acid (TA)-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) coating

Abstract

Secondary reactions of surface coating are of great importance and have drawn great attentions, since it can make the coating as a versatile platform for different uses via tailoring surface properties. A good example is the polydopamine (PDA) coating which has been widely used for preparation of various functional materials owing to its secondary reactions. In our recent study, we have developed hierarchical tannic acid (TA)-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) coating with distinct layer-nanospheres structure. Herein, the secondary reactions of the TA-APTES coating has been investigated in detail. And for the first time, various (TA-APTES)-based functional materials including superhydrophobic, adsorbent, and catalytic materials have been prepared for oil/water separation, dye adsorption, and 4-nitrophenol reduction, respectively. Significantly, under the same conditions, the performance of the (TA-APTES)-based functional materials is much better than that of the PDA-based materials: (a) The adsorptive capacity of the (TA-APTES)-based adsorbent toward rose bengal, methyl bule, orange G, and amaranthus red is 80.1%, 96.2%, 86.1%, and 98.6% higher than that of the PDA-based adsorbent, respectively; (b) The (TA-APTES)-based catalytic material can reduce about 98% of 4-NP in 10 min, while the PDA-based material can only reduce 60% of 4-NP under the same conditions; (c) After reacting with octadecyltrimethoxysilane, the TA-APTES coating can be directly transformed into superhydrophobic coating for oil/water separation, while the PDA coating is only hydrophobic and cannot separate oil/water mixture. The reasons for the significantly improved performance of the (TA-APTES)-based materials have been revealed. Our findings demonstrate that the TA-APTES coating can act as an outstanding platform for preparation of various functional materials with preferable performance, and the TA-APTES coating will be a promising substitute for PDA coatings.