Robust superhydrophobic fabrics: Rapid preparation and outstanding photothermal-induced performance

Abstract

Developing material that can separate oil-water mixture and absorb spilled crude oil efficiently has become a pressing challenge. To this end, we prepared a polydopamine@octamine nano-capsules based superhydrophobic fabric with photothermal effect rapidly using UV-assisted preparation. The prepared superhydrophobic fabric exhibits excellent photothermal-induced oil absorption and oil-water separation performance. Not only oils with low viscosity can be absorbed efficiently, but also oils with high viscosity can be absorbed quickly. POS fabric could absorb crude oil up to 6.5 times of its own weight. The oil-water separation efficiency and flux could reach more than 98.8 % and 16,900 L·m−2·h−1, respectively. Moreover, the separation efficiency remained unchanged even after 50 separation cycles while the separation flux rose gradually with the increase of oil-water separation cycle. Meanwhile, the as-prepared superhydrophobic fabric reveals outstanding durability and stability. It maintains superhydrophobic performance even after exposed to various harsh conditions such as acids, alkalis, salts, organic solvents, UV light, and mechanical abrasion. Additionally, the fabric has outstanding self-healing ability and which can extend its service life. Therefore, this simple, fast, and environment-friendly preparation method together with the excellent performance of resultant materials is expected to have broad application prospects in the treatment of oily wastewater and offshore crude oil spills.