Fabrication And Application Of Superhydrophobic Cotton Textiles

With the improvement of nano technology, the superhydrophobic materials with single function have not satisfied requirements of people. So far, an increasing number of specialists and sholars have been devoted to the methods of developing intelligent, multi-functional superhydrophobic materials. Apparently, the product described above becomes the main trend in this field. Therefore, based on the principle of fabricating superhydrophobic surface, the following work will focus on enhancing the stable superhydrophobicity of cotton textiles, and endowing more multi-functional to cotton fabrics by different experimental routes.1. The superhydrophobic film on cotton surface (with the WCA of155±2°) has been prepared by utilizing cationic poly-DMDAAC and anionic silica particles together with subsequent modification of (heptadecafluoro-1,1,2,2-tetradecyl) trimethoxysilane. After the characterizations of SEM, XPS and WCA, the superhydrophobicity of treated cotton fabrics surfaces in this study could be explained by the combination of two effects:firstly, the effect of the roughness created by Layer-by-layer self-assembly deposition of cationic poly-DMDAAC and silica particles; and secondly, the contribution of a hydrophobic layer coated on the surface during silanization by (heptadecafluoro-1,1,2,2-tetradecyl) trimethoxysilane molecules.2. In the experiment described in the following, we will fabricate a cotton fabric with the important functions of superhydrophobicity, waterproofing and flame retardancy by the covalent deposition of amino-functionalized silica nanospheres on epoxy-functionalized cotton textile to generate surface roughness, followed by the hydrophobization with (heptadecafluoro-1,1,2,2-tetradecyl) trimethoxysilane. The wetting behavior of cotton samples after decoration has been transformed from superhydrophicity to superhydrophobicity, and their LOI value of cotton fabric was only18.3%.3. We are so excited to report a simple drop-coating method for fabricating a robust superhydrophobic film on cotton surface (with the WCA of155±2°), which contains modified-ZnO nanoparticles and polystyrene. This superhydrophobic cotton surface presents the outstanding performences on mechanical durability and chemical stability. Most importantly, this cotton textile obtained by a single, feasible and cost-effective drop-coating procedure can be used in water-oil separation, which is rarely put forward and studied. Moreover, its superhydrophobic stability has been investigated after exposure to ambient air or immersion in oil and corrosive liquids as well. Thanks to the superhydrophobic cotton, nearly100%of the water was collected, while approximately92%of the oil was recovered.4. We will report a type of cotton textile with superhydrophobicity and superoleophilicity. The observations indicate that this cotton textile could separate different oil/water mixtures with different efficiencies. The separation of water and oil mixture by this cotton textile has been also investigated qualitatively and quantitatively. In addition, we have explored the UV-resistance and thermal stability of this superhydrophobic cotton textile. From the spectra, we observed that the treated textiles possessed excellent ability against ultraviolet radiation with the transmittance under2%in the range of200-400cm-1.