Coordinated silicon elastomer coating@fabrics with oil/water separation capabilities, outstanding durability and ultra-fast room-temperature self-healing ability

Abstract

Coating@fabrics with self-healing hydrophobic properties for oil/water separation have attracted significant attention. However, currently used self-healing coating@fabrics only enable the recovery of surface properties of the coating on fabrics. If the coating gets seriously damaged from the interior (i.e., torn apart), the recovery of the oil/water separation performance becomes difficult. In this study, a novel strategy to achieve a self-healing ability based on coating materials with reversible dynamic bonds was proposed. To develop this idea, a self-healing silicon elastomer cross-linked via cobalt (Co)-based coordination was coated on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fabrics. The as-modified fabrics exhibited hydrophobic properties with a contact angle (CA) of >140°, a high oil/water separation factor of around 99%, high durability (even at extremely low temperatures), and an ultra-fast self-healing ability at room temperature. After being immersed in liquid nitrogen and damaged under beating, the modified fabrics still exhibited fast self-healing properties (healing time was just 10 min) and a high oil/water separation efficiency of above 98%. Thus, this study proposes a novel design concept for the fabrication of coating@fabrics with outstanding self-healing efficiency to recover oil/water separation performance at room temperature, and may pave a way for the development of an efficient family of self-healing fabrics.