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Facile construction of a degradable and renewable superhydrophobic indole-based hemiaminal aerogel for efficient oil–water separation

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Abstract

Design readily available and inexpensive aerogels as potential sorbent materials for oil–water separation is extremely significant because of the increasing discharge of domestic oil pollution. Hereby, a novel superhydrophobic indole-based hemiaminal aerogel (PCINA) without any post-surface treatment was fabricated by a facile, simple and mild method via sol–gel technology followed by freeze-drying. The as-obtained indole-based hemiaminal aerogel exhibited high absorption capacity for varieties of oils and organic solvents. In addition, the separation efficiency of oil–water mixture was as high as 99.8%, even the separation efficiency of emulsion could achieve to 98.2%. More excitingly, the indole-based hemiaminal aerogel PCINA possessed repeatability and regeneration due to the feasible desorption and rapid degradation, suggesting that the green and renewable aerogel was a promising material for the treatment of oil contaminants in different fields.

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Some or all data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21973076 and 22006122), the Project of the Central-Guided Local Science and Technology Development (2022ZYD0025), the Sichuan Talent Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (2021JDJQ0033), the Applied Basic Research Programs of Sichuan Science and Technology Department (2021YJ0059), the Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan Province (2022NSFSC0310), and the Innovation and Development Fund of China Academy of Engineering Physics (CX20210039).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Environment-Friendly Energy Materials and School of Materials and Chemistry, School of Manufacturing Science and Engineering, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang, 621010, People’s Republic of China

    Rui Guo, Yuyu Zhang, Lun Wang, Yin Huang, Rui Yuan, Li Yang & Guanjun Chang

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  1. Rui Guo
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  2. Yuyu Zhang
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  3. Lun Wang
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Contributions

RG and YZ performed the characterization analysis and application experiments. RG and RY synthesized the samples. YH and GC conceived the study. RG, LY, LW and GC wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Li Yang or Guanjun Chang.

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Guo, R., Zhang, Y., Wang, L. et al. Facile construction of a degradable and renewable superhydrophobic indole-based hemiaminal aerogel for efficient oil–water separation. J Mater Sci 58, 8346–8358 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-023-08564-7

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