Limited robustness
is a serious drawback for superhydrophobic coatings
and degrades the performance of superhydrophobic surfaces in practical
applications. Although fluororeagents have excellent durability for
superhydrophobicity, their use has been restricted due to various
health and environmental concerns. In this work, we describe a facile
and efficient fabrication strategy for creating robust fluorine-free
superhydrophobic composite coatings that are prepared by a simple
dip-dry method, in which the H3BO3-incorporated
SiO2–alkyl-silane coatings are deposited on woven
cotton fabric surfaces followed by polydimethylsiloxane modification.
The coated surface shows a large water contact angle of 157.95 ±
2° and a small sliding hysteresis angle (SHA) of 3.8 ± 0.6°,
demonstrating excellent superhydrophobicity. The coated fabric surface
also exhibited robustness and durability, withstanding a tape-peeling
test (under 48.05 kPa) for around 80 repetitions and sandpaper rubbing
(loaded 100 g) for 40 cycles. Furthermore, the coated fabric surface
displayed self-healing and oil–water separation capacities.
The developed superhydrophobic coatings in this study are robust,
environmentally benign, and easy to fabricate, showing promising applications
in textile industries.
This study reports a novel cross-linking
approach to fabricate
the hydrothermally neutralized silica hydrogel of SiO2–H3BO3–hexadecyltrimethoxysilane by grafting
alkylsilane groups onto the nanoporous silica. The synthesized silica
hydrogel possessed a large specific surface area of 51.3 m2g–1 and showed excellent dye adsorption capability
of cationic dyes in neutral (pH 7) and alkaline (pH 9) medium from
wastewater. The colloidal electrokinetic potential analysis revealed
that the outstanding adsorption efficiency of cationic dyes over anionic
dyes strongly relies on the surface charge of the hydrogels. Moreover,
the hydrophobic interactions between the dye molecules and the hydrogels
were studied, and it was found that the dye adsorption performance
can be tuned by altering the concentration of hydrophobic reagents
of the hydrogel. The dye adsorption mechanism was established, and
the kinetic study suggested that the adsorption is a pseudo-second-order
reaction. Adsorption isotherms at various equilibrium conditions fitted
well with the Langmuir isotherm. Therefore, this strongly supports
the promising and practical application of the prepared silica hydrogel.
The recyclability of the hydrogel was studied, and it showed 90% adsorption
efficiency by the regenerated gel up to 6 cycles, which has a high
potential in wastewater treatment.
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