Journal of Materials Science

, Volume 50, Issue 6, pp 2365–2369 | Cite as

A superhydrophobic monolithic material with tunable wettability for oil and water separation

Original Paper
First Online:
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Accepted:

Abstract

The development of a convenient method for oil-removal is of great significance for environmental protection. Here, we present a simple method for the removal of oils from water surface based on sponges that we fabricated by solution-immersion processes. The sponges exhibited high selectivity and absorption capacities for various kinds of oils when they were employed as absorptive materials. More importantly, the superhydrophobic sponge could be sustained 400 cycles of compressing test without losing their superhydrophobicity, exhibiting the high elasticity, robustness, and durability. To extend application field, superhydrophobic filter paper was used for oil–water separation. Interestingly, tunable wettability was received when oleophobic silica was employed instead of hydrophobic silica. We expected that this low-cost process can be used for oil-spill cleanup.

Keywords

Contact Angle Sponge Superhydrophobic Surface Monolithic Material Water Separation 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Notes

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the financial support of the National Nature Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51335010).

Supplementary material

10853_2014_8756_MOESM1_ESM.docx (2.5 mb)
Supplementary material 1 (DOCX 2552 kb)

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.State Key Laboratory of Solid Lubrication, Lanzhou Institute of Chemical PhysicsChinese Academy of SciencesLanzhouPeople’s Republic of China
  2. 2.University of Chinese Academy of SciencesBeijingPeople’s Republic of China

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