Fabrication of superhydrophobic phosphor-copper mesh via one-step method And application in oil-water separation

In view of the time-consuming procedure and/or high cost for the fabrication of superhydrophobic materials, a simple one-step process was developed to render phosphor-copper mesh surfaces with superhydrophobicity. Thus, coralloid Cu2O nanostructure was generated on phosphor-copper mesh surface by immersing the mesh in the mixed solution (volume ratio of 1:3) of the ethanol solution of 1-dodecanethiol (0.01 mol/L) containing and distilled water at room temperature. The results show that the as-prepared phosphor-copper mesh exhibits very high advancing/receding contact angles of 161.2°±0.7° and 160.2°±0.3°, as well as a low contact angle hysteresis of 1.1°±0.5°. Moreover, four types of oils and organic solvents (gasoline, diesel oil, n-hexane, toluene, and chloroform) can be well separated by the mesh at an efficiency of more than 98%. Compared with the traditional two-step preparation process, the present method has advantages of easy operation, reduced material consumption, short reaction time, and high efficiency. This demonstrates that this approach, being facile, inexpensive and time-saving, can be well adopted to fabricate ordered Cu2O nanostructures on the phosphor-copper mesh, thereby providing some guidances for the large-scale practical application of the superhydrophobic structure. © 2016, Editorial Office of CHINA SURFACE ENGINEERING. All right reserved.