Preparation of Superhydrophobic Fabrics via Chemical Self-Healing Strategy and Their High Oil/Water Separation Performance and Enhanced Durability

The ability of a fabric to restore its superhydrophobicity after damage is utilized to prepare highly durable fabrics for oil/water separation. A physical self-healing concept is a conventional way to improve durability. However, this method cannot recover the oil/water separation performance when serious damage appears. In this work, a chemical self-healing concept to solve the above problem is proposed. Self-healable silicon rubber (SR), which is cross-linked by cobalt-based coordination bonds, is coated on silica@polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fabrics. The modified fabric exhibits superhydrophobic characteristics with a contact angle of 158°, high oil/water separation efficiency (≈99%), and high durability. After damage, these modified fabrics enable fast self-healing at room temperature (in just 10 min) and maintain their oil/water separation efficiency above 98%. For conventional SR-modified silica@PET fabrics, their superhydrophobicity and oil/water separation efficiency significantly decreases under identical damaging. Thus, this study provides a new path for the development of various room-temperature self-healable superhydrophobic fabrics.