A durable underwater superoleophobic and underoil superhydrophobic fabric for versatile oil/water separation

Quick and on-demand oil/water separation by superwetting materials has attracted wide attention in recent years. Herein, an underoil superhydrophobic and underwater superoleophobic cotton fabric was used for highly efficient and versatile oil/water separation, such as heavy oil/water separation, light oil/water separation, water-in-oil emulsion separation and oil-in-water emulsion separation, and even immiscible organic solvents separation. The fabric was fabricated via a simple two-step approach, including a vapor-liquid sol-gel process to deposit silica with thiols (SiO 2 -SH) particles, and a followed thiol-ene click reaction to graft 2-(dimethylamino) ethyl methacrylate (DMAEMA) and shows an underoil water contact angle (UOWCA) of 162° and an underwater oil contact angle (UWOCA) of 162°. Importantly, the fabric is able to maintain its high UOWCA and UWOCA after 120 h UV irradiation, 1000 g sand impact and after separately immersed in acid, base, neutral and NaCl solution for 168 h as well as various organic solvents for 240 h. The fabric with simple fabrication, excellent durability and versatile separation abilities might has potential application in various liquids separation.