A waterproofing textile with robust superhydrophobicity in either air or oil surroundings

Manmade superhydrophobic textiles are mechanically weak, and the current methods to solve this problem are usually laborious and cost ineffective. Herein, to address this challenge, we created a robust superhydrophobic textile by a one step immersion process that benefited of simplicity and cost efficiency. The resulting textile remained its superhydrophobicity after finger pressing, knife scratching, twisting by hands, and even 10 cycles of abrasion with sandpaper. We also studied the wetting behavior of the resulting superhydrophobic textile when exposed to oily environments. The results showed that the obtained textile still displayed superhydrophobic when immersed in oil surrounding, and it kept its water repellency even after being contaminated by oil. Moreover, exploiting its superhydrophobicity and super-oleophilicity, the obtained textile was demonstrated as the separation membrane and oil absorption to separate oil from oil-water mixtures efficiently. (C) 2016 Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.