Study of Oil Dewetting Ability of Superhydrophilic and Underwater Superoleophobic Surfaces from Air to Water for High-Effective Self-Cleaning Surface Designing

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Abstract
Superhydrophilic self-cleaning surface can perfectly deal with oil pollution, which cannot be realized by superhydrophobic surface. This research is designed to study the mechanism of wetting behavior of superhydrophilic coating with different function groups and guide to design stable self-cleaning surface. We prepare several hydrophilic coatings including nonionic, ionic and zwitterionic coatings to investigate their self-cleaning performance underwater when they have been polluted by oil in dry state. The chemical composition, surface roughness, static and dynamic wettability, underwater oil adhesive force and swelling degree of the coatings are studied to explore their oil dewetting mechanism. The results indicate that the wettability of the coating to water and oil is the key factor to determine the self-cleaning performance. The smooth 3-Sulfopropyl methacrylate potassium salt (SA) anionic coating shows the best self-cleaning performance even be polluted by heavy crude oil in dry state in air. It is also found that in dry state the rough hydrophilic anionic surface will lock up the oil in the structures and then lose its self-cleaning ability underwater, while oil droplet can detach from the smooth coating surface quickly. Meanwhile, the superhydrophilic and underwater superoleophobic SA anionic surface also exhibits excellent anti-fogging and oil-water separation performance.
Funding Information
  • National Natural Science Foundation of China (51703235, U1809214, U1809213)

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