Facile one-step preparation of robust hydrophobic cotton fabrics by covalent bonding polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane for ultrafast oil/water separation

Nowadays, oil contamination has become a major source of water pollution and results in the global environmental challenge. Although numerous efforts have been made on the fabrication of oil/water separation materials, their practical applications are still hindered by the low preparation efficiency, weak mechanical durability, poor chemical tolerance and environmental resistance, as well as low permeation flux. To overcome these drawbacks, herein, we directly anchor hydrophobic/oleophilic polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS) onto the surface of cotton fabric by one-step dipping strategy to yield a robust POSS based hydrophobic oil/water separation membrane. At First, commercially available octavinyl-POSS (VPOSS) was functionalized by 3-mercaptopropyltrimethoxysilane (MPTMS) via thiol-ene click reaction to afford a novel POSS derivate, named POSS-MPTMS. Then, it was used for modification of the cotton fabric by one-step dip-coating method to form a stable and robust POSS layer. The formed POSS layer endow modified cotton fabric become hydrophobic with the water contact angle higher than 142°. More importantly, the POSS modified fabric can withstand UV irradiation, chemical corrosion, ultrasonic washing as well as repeatedly mechanical abrasion for a long time. Solely driven by gravity, the modified fabric can enable separation of oil/water mixture with a permeation flux as high as 114,744 L·m−2·h−1. Moreover, it maintains excellent stability and effective separation property even in harsh environments with high concentration of acid, alkali, and salt solutions. We believe this facile strategy is a good solution for construction of advanced filtration materials for practical oil/water separation.