Graphene oxide coated meshes with stable underwater superoleophobicity and anti-oil-fouling property for highly efficient oil/water separation

Developing underwater superoleophobic filtration materials with robust stability and excellent anti-oil-fouling performance in harsh environments is desired for high efficiency oil/water separation. In this work, irregular hydrophilic graphene oxide (GO) was adopted as a coating material to modify oxidized copper mesh with desired hierarchical surface roughness and hydrophilic composition through a novel in situ copper ion induced crosslinking method. The combination of microscale copper wires and nanoscale hydrophilic GO sheets endowed the resultant GO coated oxidized copper mesh (GO@CuO) with unique underwater superoleophobicity and excellent anti-oil-fouling property. Moreover, the mesh exhibited excellent stability in corrosive solutions with no apparent variations in wetting properties, indicating its good stability. The as-prepared GO@CuO mesh can be applied to separate oil/water mixtures with high efficiency (>99.49%) and good reusability. Due to the excellent anti-oil-fouling property, high separation efficiency, and good stability, the as-prepared underwater superoleophobic mesh could find broad applications in oil/water separations.