Fabrication of Durable Superhydrophobic Stainless Steel Mesh with Nano/Micro Flower-Like Morphologies for Self-Cleaning and Efficient Oil/Water Separation

How to fabricate durable superhydrophobic materials for cyclic oil/water separation to solve oil-induced pollutions is still a problem.Herein,we fabricated a durable Superhydrophobic Stainless Steel Mesh(SH-SSM)with nano/micro flower-like sheets by self-assembly of zinc stearate for the cyclic separation of various oil/water mixtures.The SH-SSM exhibits durable superhydrophobicity against static or dynamic treatments.In virtue of durable superhydrophobicity of the SH-SSM,the dusts on surface of SH-SSM can be removed completely by running water immediately showing excellent self-cleaning performance.Moreover,the SH-SSM can be used to perform gravity-driven separation of heavy oil/water and light oil/water mixtures by utilizing its superhydrophobicity that oil phase penetrates the mesh and water phase is restricted.Separation efficiencies of the SH-SSM can reach 99.99%.After 20 cycles of separation,the separation efficiencies for are>97.00%and>98.25%for heavy oil/water and light oil/water mixtures,respectively.Flux values of dichloromethane,hexane and petroleum ether are 2.5×10^(5) L m^(−2) h^(−1),1.7×10^(5) L m^(−2) h^(−1),and 1.8×10^(5) L m^(−2) h^(−1),respectively.This study proposes a facial approach to prepare durable superhydrophobic and self-cleaning material for cyclic and fast separation of oil/water.