Nacre-Inspired Design of Mechanical Stable Coating with Underwater Superoleophobicity

Abstract

Because of the frequent oil spill accidents in marine environment, stable superoleophobic coatings under seawater are highly desired. Current underwater superoleophobic surfaces often suffer from mechanical damages and lose their superoleophobicity gradually. It remains a challenge to fabricate a stable and robust underwater superoleophobic film which can endure harsh conditions in practical application. Nacre is one of most extensively studied rigid biological materials. Inspired by the outstanding mechanical property of seashell nacre and those underwater superoleophobic surfaces from nature, we fabricated a polyelectrolyte/clay hybrid film via typical layer-by-layer (LBL) method based on building blocks with high surface energy. 'Bricks-and-mortar' structure of seashell nacre was conceptually replicated into the prepared film, which endows the obtained film with excellent mechanical property and great abrasion resistance. In addtion, the prepared film also exhibits stable underwater superoleophobicity, low oil adhesion, and outstanding environment durability in artificial seawater. We anticipate that this work will provide a new method to design underwater low-oil-adhesion film with excellent mechanical property and improved stability, which may advance the practical applications in marine antifouling and microfluidic devices.

Robust superhydrophobic tungsten oxide coatings with photochromism and UV durability properties

“…[7] Therefore, improving the mechanical properties is an urgent demand. Recent studies have taken many efforts to solve the problem [8], [9] and [10].…”

A pH-responsive smart surface for the continuous separation of oil/water/oil ternary mixtures

“…9 Inspired by the oleophobicity of fish scales, several additional superhydrophilic/underwater superoleophobic materials have been proposed [10][11][12][13][14][15][16] in water-rich mixtures that allow water infiltration but prevent oil penetration when used underwater. These superhydrophilic/underwater superoleophobic materials [17][18][19] may very well solve the problems of oil blocking that occurred in the system of water/oil with lower density than water during the separating process in conventional superhydrophobic/superoleophilic oil/water-separating materials. Although the above work describes materials suitable for passing either water or oil while excluding the other, the challenge of separating three-phase oil/water/oil mixtures in situ using the wetting properties of superhydrophobic/ superoleophilic materials still remains.…”

Nacre-mimetics with synthetic nanoclays up to ultrahigh aspect ratios

“…However, this is a major scientific and technological challenge as precise nanostructuration at such biomimetic compositions with high fractions of reinforcements is hard to combine with large-scale processing methods. Various efforts have been undertaken to mimic the layered hard/soft composite structure of nacre 9 via for example, several sequential approaches, such as LbL [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] and other multilayer deposition strategies 19,20 , ice-templating and sintering of ceramics [21][22][23] , spray coating 24,25 , glow discharge plasma deposition 26 , uncontrolled co-casting of polymer/clay mixtures 27,28 , or processes at interfaces 29,30 . Unfortunately, many of these approaches are limited to a very small scale, and remain technologically infeasible owing to energy-intensive and laborious multistep procedures.…”