Multifunctional superhydrophobic conductive sponge for real-time monitoring of oil-water separation and amphibious human activity

Composite materials with porous structures show good application prospects in the field of oil-water separation because it is beneficial for oil absorption and storage. However, it is still a challenge to achieve real-time monitoring during oil-water separation and amphibious monitoring of human motion. In this paper, a multifunctional sponge PDMS/rGO/PDA/MS with superhydrophobic and pressure perception properties was prepared by the dip-and-dry method. The multifunctional sponge exhibits excellent resistance to physical and chemical superhydrophobicity, including good chemical inertness (pH=2/13), robustness (10 anti-friction cycles), and compressibility (100 anti-compression cycles). Meanwhile, the multifunctional sponge showed good stability of pressure perception, including accurate identification of different pressures (200 similar to 2000 Pa) and frequency (0.1 similar to 0.5 Hz) of compression and fast response/recovery time (360/219 ms). Benefiting from its porous structure, durable super-hydrophobicity, and pressure sensing properties, the multifunctional sponge enables gravity-assisted oil-water separation of light/heavy oil, gravity/water pressure sensing, real-time monitoring of oil-water separation and amphibious monitoring of human movement. Therefore, this sponge shows potential as a new generation of multifunctional sponges with applications in oil-water separation and amphibious monitoring.