Unexpected superhydrophobic polydopamine on cotton fabric
Introduction
Generally, surface with excellent water repellent property embodied in its static contact angle higher than 150° and sliding angle lower than 10° is defined as superhydrophobic surface [[1], [2], [3]]. In recent decades, based on the distinguished Wenzel and Cassie-Baxter theories [4,5], plenty of ways have been developed to fabricate superhydrophobic materials such as etching [6], chemical vapor deposition [7], laser writing [8], electrospinning [9], hydrothermal treating [10], electro-deposition [11], etc. Moreover, this kind of functional surface has been applied in various fields such as self-cleaning [[12], [13], [14]], drag-reduction [15], anti-corrosion [16], anti-icing [17], oil / water separation [18], etc. Among the vast amount of superhydrophobic materials, the superhydrophobic fabric fabricated via different method including grafting [22,26], mineralization [24], spray [27], and cross-linking [28] especially attracts lots of attention due to its close relation to our daily life [[19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28]].
Simultaneously, mussel-inspired chemistry, especially the deposition of polydopamine (PDA), has been used as a new technique in the surface modification [[29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34], [35], [36]]. It is worth mentioning that PDA tends to show its hydrophilia with the typical static contact angle of ca. 50° on a wide range of planar substrates such as polymer (polytetrafluoroethylene, polycarbonate, nitrocellulose), oxide (SiO2, TiO2) and metal (Cu, Au) [29]. Under the magnification effect of surface roughness according to the Wenzel theory [4], even superhydrophilic nature was endowed on the porous membrane such as polyvinylidene fluoride [37], polypropylene [38], and polyethyleneterephthalate [39] once modified with PDA.
By simultaneous co-depositing or subsequent surface grafting with other hydrophobic chemicals, the PDA-based coating becomes hydrophobic or even superhydrophobic. Such co-deposition and surface modification are generally based on the catechols existed in PDA which can react with thiols and amines via Michael addition reactions [29]. For example, Chen et al. [40] and Xu et al. [41] fabricated superhydrophobic thiol-textiles via simultaneous co-deposition with octadecanethiol and subsequent surface grafting with perfluorodecyl mercaptan, respectively. In addition, Fu et al. [42] developed the technique of co-deposition of PDA with folic acid and prominent superhydrophobicity was achieved after further modifying with stearylamine.
Herein, for the first time, via a simple one-step deposition of PDA without any further surface modification or co-deposition with any other low-face-energy molecules, superhydrophobic cotton fabric was unexpectedly fabricated. Moreover, the so-obtained superhydrophobic sample showed excellent durability against acid, boiling water, laundering, abrasion, ultrasonic oscillation in ethanol solution. To reveal its potential application, the superhydrophobic fabric was used for oil / water separation, which has been a hot research topic these years [[43], [44], [45], [46], [47], [48], [49]]. The results demonstrate that superhydrophobic fabric keeps excellent performance, such as high flux, high separation efficiency, and good recyclability, in the process of oil / water separation.
Section snippets
Materials and chemicals
Cotton fabrics (woven with the average thickness of 0.54 mm and the areal weight of 367.83 g/m2; the warp and weft ends per centimeter are 15 and 10, respectively) were purchased from a local store. Anthrone (C14H10O, >98%) was purchased from Solarbio. Dopamine hydrochloride (DA, 98.5 %) and tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane (TRIS, 99.8 %) were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich. Anhydrous copper sulfate (99 %), hydrogen peroxide (30 %) and H2SO4 (98%) were purchased from Sinopharm Chemical Reagent
Surface wettability
The surface appearance as observed by naked eyes and FE-SEM is shown in Fig. 2. The pristine cotton fabric is white (Fig. 2-a1) and the fibers are smooth (Fig. 2a2, a3). Once PDA is deposited thereon, the sample turns to brown and the aggregates are observed. As the deposition time prolonging, the PDA sample becomes darker (Fig. 2b1–e1) and the aggregates are more densely distributed (Fig. 2b2–e2). These analyses suggest that, as the deposition time prolonging, more PDA clusters are formed on
Conclusion
For the first time, we have unexpectedly fabricated a durable superhydrophobic cotton fabric via a simple deposition of polydopamine (PDA) and given a possible explanation for the superhydrophobicity. Moreover, the breakdown of its superhydrophobicity against mechanical impacting (abrasion), chemical impacting (immersion in acid, alkali, and boiling water), and a combining of chemical / mechanical impacting (laundering, ethanol ultrasonication) has been assessed. Except for the immersion test
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Junfei Ou: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software. Ji Ma: Writing - original draft. Fajun Wang: Data curation, Writing - original draft. Wen Li: Supervision. Xinzuo Fang: Investigation. Sheng Lei: Software, Validation. Alidad Amirfazli: Conceptualization.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge with pleasure the financial support of this work by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51563018), Qing Lan Project of Jiangsu Province and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20191034).
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