Facile fabrication of superhydrophobic filtration fabric with honeycomb structures for the separation of water and oil

The superhydrophobic filtration fabric (SFF), with a water contact angle (WCA) higher than 150 degrees, was prepared by a facile dip-coating method through decorating the surface with poly(dimethyl siloxanes) (PDMS)/silica (SiO2) composite coating. To improve the roughness of the surface, toluene and ethanol was used as co-solvent to induce microphase separation. When the mass ratio of ethanol to toluene was 0.6, the SFF showed a high WCA of 152 degrees with some porous honeycomb structures distributed on the surface. Moreover, the as-prepared SFF showed both superhydrophobicity and superoleophilicity, and could effectively separate the mixture of water and oil. Based on the study, the separation mechanism was also proposed. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.