Multifunctional superamphiphobic SiO2 coating for crude oil transportation

Abstract

Superamphiphobic materials are helping with urgent issues due to increasing industrial oil transportation, as well as common oil pollution, which has triggered large interest owing to their high application value and practicability. However, they are difficult to be fabricated because of the peculiarly shaped surface structures and the substrate-dependent property, and hence, their practical applications has been immensely limited. Herein, we prepare a hierarchical superamphiphobic FOTS-SiO2 powder via a reduction reaction and self-assembly functionalization. Owing to the substrate-independent character and excellent super-repellency of the powder, it can be applied to various substrates to fabricate superamphiphobic coatings. The prepared coatings have a wide range of liquids repellency to water, oils, and even to low-surface-tension liquids like 60 wt% ethanol-water solution (25.48 mN·m−1) and n-decane (23.8 mN·m−1). What’s more, the coatings also own great water/oil-proofing ability, excellent chemical stability, antifouling and self-cleaning property. Apart from these general performances, we find that the coating has terrific anti-crude-oil-adhesion property, which endows it a new application—crude oil transportation with high efficiency (2.9 ± 0.09 mL/s). All of these advantages will endow the superamphiphobic FOTS-SiO2 particles with broad application prospects, including foodservice industry, petroleum exploitation, crude oil transportation industry, and so on.