Fabrication of a superhydrophobic fabric with a uniform hierarchical structure via a bottom-blown stirring method for highly efficient oil–water separation

Abstract

Highly efficient and multifunctional superhydrophobic fabrics have attracted widespread attention because of the urgent need for oil–water separation technologies. A superhydrophobic polyester fabric with a uniform surface roughness was fabricated via a novel bottom-blown stirring method. The water contact angle increased from 95.3° ± 1.1° of pure polyester fabric to 152.5° ± 0.7°, and the improved uniform roughness led to superhydrophobic fabric with a high separation efficiency (>99.5%) and oil flux (29443 L m−2 h−1), even after 10 cycles of oil–water separation. As the control group, the fabric prepared via traditional magnetic stirring methods could not separate the oil from the water after two cycles. Furthermore, the superhydrophobic fabric showed high mechanical abrasion resistance, even after 100 abrasion cycles on sandpaper (1000 mesh). In addition, the superhydrophobic fabric showed excellent self-cleaning properties and chemical stability. This work provides a new method for fabricating superhydrophobic fabrics with uniform roughness properties that lead to high separation efficiencies and abrasiveness for practical applications in oil–water separation.