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pH-responsive smart superwetting Fe foam for efficient in situ on-demand oil/water separation

  • Metals & corrosion
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Abstract

Confronted with the increasing oily wastewater and oil leakage accidents, it is urgent to seek effective strategies to separate water/oil mixtures or clean spilt oil. In particular, the superwetting materials with special selective permeability have shown advantages in separating oil/water mixtures. Herein, Fe foams with switchable wettability were successfully fabricated via electrodeposition method and modification of mixed thiols. The smart Fe foam with pH-responsive wettability possessed selective separation performance for variety oil/water mixtures. In air, the superhydrophobic/superoleophilic foam worked in the oil-removing mode could allow the heavy oil to completely penetrate only by gravity, while retaining the water. After alkaline treatments, the water could spontaneously permeate through the superhydrophilic/underwater superoleophobic foam while preventing light oil from passing, belonging to the water-removing mode. After ten separation cycles, the separation efficiency of various oil/water mixtures still maintained not less than 98.5%. In addition, it also could achieve non-contact, remote control for oil–water separation. Meanwhile, the smart Fe foam possessed good mechanical durability, long-term stability and heat resistance. It is expected to provide a potential simple route to handle oil spills under various conditions and situations, which also is beneficial to expand the application of smart surface.

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Acknowledgement

The authors thank the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51775231), National Postdoctoral Program for Innovative Talents (BX20180123), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2018M641782), Scientific Research Project of Jilin Provincial Department of Education (JJKH20211117KJ) and JLU Science and Technology Innovative Research Team (No. 2017TD-04).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Bionic Engineering (Ministry of Education), Jilin University, Changchun, 130022, China

    Shuyi Li, Juan Liu, Yan Liu, Bin Zhan, Zhiwu Han & Luquan Ren

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  1. Shuyi Li
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Contributions

SL Investigation, Conceptualization, Methodology, Data curation, Writing—Original Draft, Writing—Review and Editing, Funding acquisition. JL Investigation, Methodology, Data curation, Writing—Original Draft. YL Conceptualization, Writing—Reviewing and Editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition. BZ: Writing—Reviewing. ZH: Resources. LR: Resources.

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Correspondence to Yan Liu.

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Handling Editor: Catalin Croitoru.

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Li, S., Liu, J., Liu, Y. et al. pH-responsive smart superwetting Fe foam for efficient in situ on-demand oil/water separation. J Mater Sci 56, 13372–13385 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-021-06118-3

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