One-step electrodeposition to fabricate superhydrophobic coating and its reversible wettability transformation

Abstract

A one-step electrodeposition method was utilized to fabricate coatings with switchable wettability on stainless steel meshes to extend the application of materials in the intelligent material industry. This method did not involve low surface energy materials and had advantages of simple and good repeatable. Through changing pH value, deposition temperature and voltage, the relationship between morphology and wettability of the as-prepared coatings were studied. The SEM results show numbers of particles on the coatings under the optimum condition and some of them aggregated into micro-pine hierarchical structures. The coatings achieved superhydrophobicity with a contact angle of 155.5°. After being placed at 450 °C for 3 h, the superhydrophobic film turned into superhydrophilic. The film regained superhydrophobicity after hydrothermal treatment in glucose aqueous solution, which exhibited a reversible transition between superhydrophobicity and superhydrophilicity. In addition, the superhydrophilic coatings could be used to separate light oil, such as diesel, gasoline, toluene, benzene and lubricants, excellent oil-water separation ability of 95%.

Keywords

• one-step electrodeposition
• superhydrophobic
• reversible wettability
• Cu2O/CuO
• oil/water separation