Swan feather-inspired oil-water separation
A recent study presents a swan feather-inspired fluorine-free superhydrophobic self-cleaning cotton cloth with strong oil-water separation function.
With the increasing demand of oil-water separation, superhydrophobic materials have garnered tremendous research attention due to their excellent oil-water separation efficiency. However, the biological toxicity and poor durability of fluorine-containing compounds in superhydrophobic materials severely restrict their application. In a recently conducted work, inspired by the superhydrophobic/lipophilic swan feathers, researchers proposed a two-stage thiol-ene click reaction strategy to fabricate a fluorine-free superhydrophobic and super-lipophilic oil/water separation membrane (Cotton-S-PB-SiO2).
Great separation efficiency
The Cotton-S-PB-SiO2 possessed low surface energy and abundant micro-nano structures. Meanwhile, the Cotton-S-PB-SiO2 showed extremely high wettability selectivity to water and oil phases. The separation efficiency for immiscible oil/water mixtures was above 99.9 %. More remarkably, the Cotton-S-PB-SiO2 demonstrated excellent anti-fouling and operation stability even under some harsh environments such as strong acid, alkali, salt, etc.
The study has been published in Progress in Organic Coatings, Volume 183, October 2023.
