With the current global outbreak of novel coronaviruses, the fabrication of decomposable wet wipe with sufficient wet strength to meet daily use is promising but still challenging, especially when renewable cellulose was employed. In this work, a decomposable cellulose-based wet wipe substrate is demonstrated by introducing a synthetic N-vinyl pyrrolidone-glycidyl methacrylate (NVP-GMA) adhesive on the cellulose surface. Experimental results reveal that the NVP-GMA adhesive not only significantly facilitates the chemical bonding between cellulose fibers in the wet state, but also increase the surface wettability and water retention. The as-fabricated cellulose-based wet wipe substrate displays a superb water retention capacity of 1.9 times, an excellent water absorption capacity (completely wetted with 0° water contact angle), and a perfect wet tensile index of 3.32 N.m.g
−1
. It is far better than state-of-the-art wet toilet wipe on the market (non-woven). The prepared renewable and degradable cellulose-based substrate with excellent mechanical strength has potential application prospects in diverse commercially available products such as sanitary and medical wet wipes.
Renewable superhydrophobic materials have attracted great attention due to their extensive applications in the fields such as cost‐effective and biodegradable oil/water separation field. Herein, we reported an eco‐friendly and facile methodology to develop the superhydrophobic cellulosic paper by immersion method using the ethanol solution of stearic acid. Furthermore, the treated cellulosic papers showed super‐hydrophobicity with water contact angle (WCA) above 153°. Interestingly, this method can realize superhydrophobic‐hydrophilic conversion by simply adjusting the temperature and is amenable for different substrates and with the WCA of 114‐162°. More importantly, the utilization of fluorinated reagents has been avoided, thereby minimizing the production cost and improving safety and environmental aspects. Meanwhile, the modified natural cellulosic paper is applied for oil–water separation, and its separation efficiency was as high as 95% after 10 cycles, indicating the good reusability of stearic acid modified filter papers. Consequently, this simple strategy based on the stearic acid immersion method thus provided an easy conversion of superhydrophobic‐hydrophilic interface and provided facile strategies for conversion of commercial quantitative filter paper to functional materials for oil/water separation.
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