Preparation Of Superhydrophobic Silica Aerogel Modified Fabric And Its Application

In recent years,as a kind of functional fabric,much attention has been paid on superhydrophobic fabric.And many fabrication methods such as electrospinning,chemical vapor deposition,dip coating,spray coating and other methods have been developed to fabricate superhydrophobic fabric.However,these methods still exist some disadvantages,such as harsh experimental condition,unstable coating,etc.,which largely limit the practical applications in the daily life.Besides,fluorinated-compounds have been widely applied in superhydrophobic functionalization to endow them with good performance due to the low-surface-energy,but it is restricted because of high cost and heavy pollution especially the severe influence on human health.Therefore,it is important to develop simple and environmentally friendly fabrication method and stable coating.In this paper,superhydrophobic cotton fabrics were prepared via a facile and environmentally friendly strategy to deposit an organically modified silica(Ormosil)aerogel thin film onto the fabrics firstly,followed by polydimethylsiloxane(PDMS)topcoat.In comparison with hydrophilic cotton fabric,the modified cotton fabric exhibited a highly superhydrophobic activity with a water contact angle higher than 160° and a sliding angle lower than 10°.The as-constructed PDMS-Ormosil@fabrics are able to withstand 100 cycles of abrasion and 5 cycles of accelerated machine wash without apparent decrease of the sueperhydrophobicity.In addition,the superhydrophobic cotton fabrics are very stable in strongly acidic and alkaline solutions.After dipping in acidic and alkaline solution,superhydrophobic coating is still in the cotton fabric,showing extreme highly superhydrophobicity.Furthermore,the superhydrophobic coating has no or negligible adverse effect on the important textile physical properties of the cotton fabric,such as the strength,air permeability,and flexibility.The composite super-antiwetting fabrics have demonstrated excellent anti-fouling,self-cleaning ability and is highly efficient in oil-water separation for various oil-water mixtures.The facile synthesis technique has the advantages of scalable fabrication of multifunctional fabrics for potential applications in self-cleaning and versatile water-oil separation.