Issue 9, 2020

Seawater-enhanced tough agar/poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)/clay hydrogel for anti-adhesion and oil/water separation

Abstract

Hydrogels as typical hydrophilic materials are promising candidates for designing novel functional materials for anti-fouling, oil/water separation, wearable devices, tissue scaffolds, etc. However, it still remains a challenge to design stable and tough hydrogels for applications in complex environments of high stress, temperature, salt, and pH. Herein, we fabricate a novel seawater-enhanced Agar/Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)/clay hydrogel (APNC gel) through a facile photo-initiated polymerization process. The APNC gel consists of fully interpenetrating double networks with negatively-charged clay serving as physical cross-linkers. The resulting gel exhibits tough mechanical strength (tensile strength of 0.85 MPa and compression strength of 1.68 MPa) and excellent stabilities for high temperature (100 °C) and high salt levels (20 wt% NaCl). Especially, the strength of the APNC gel is greatly enhanced (up to 5.04 MPa) by seawater, which contains numerous inorganic ions (Mg2+, Na+, K+, etc.). Meanwhile, the APNC gel presents excellent anti-adhesion performance due to the negatively-charged clay. Thus, a hydrogel-coated mesh with underwater superoleophobicity has been designed for oil/seawater separation. The resulting mesh can selectively remove oil from seawater with high separation efficiency (up to 99%). These characteristics demonstrate that the tough APNC gel will be an ideal material candidate for developing functional materials applied in a complex environment.

Graphical abstract: Seawater-enhanced tough agar/poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)/clay hydrogel for anti-adhesion and oil/water separation

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
26 दिसम्बर 2019
Accepted
10 जनवरी 2020
First published
14 जनवरी 2020

Soft Matter, 2020,16, 2199-2207

Seawater-enhanced tough agar/poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)/clay hydrogel for anti-adhesion and oil/water separation

Y. Zhu, L. Lin, J. Zeng, X. Tang, Y. Liu, P. Wu and C. Xu, Soft Matter, 2020, 16, 2199 DOI: 10.1039/C9SM02524C

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements