Chemically Customizing Mechanical Properties and Optical Transparency in Underwater Superoleophobic Coating

摘要

The inherent ability of bio-inspired underwater superoleophobicity to preventoil/oily fouling underwater makes it appropriate for a wide range ofapplications related to environmental remediation, bio-adhesion, microfluidics,chemical sensing, etc.; however, the co-association of mechanicaldurability and optical transparency is essential for realistic performance.While the design of mechanically durable and absolutely optically transparentunderwater superoleophobic coating remains challenging, here, acovalently cross-linked and chemically reactive sol-gel conversion processis introduced through 1,4-conjugate addition reaction to achieve asubstrate-independent and tolerant coating for orthogonally modulatingthe underwater oil wettability, optical transparency, and even mechanicalproperties of highly deformable porous and fibrous substrates. The postmodificationof residual chemical reactivity in the prepared coating allowsto embed underwater superoleophobicity, and the β-amino-ester-crosslinksimprove the mechanical property of selected deformable substrates.Moreover, it displayed unperturbed performance even after prolonged (30days) exposures in practically relevant chemically harsh aquatic conditions—including extremes of pH, artificial seawater, surfactant contaminatedwater, etc. The approach is successfully applied to coat varioussubstrates—including porous, fibrous, and planar objects, and it would beuseful in protecting various relevant marine infrastructures from oil/oilyfouling, and various other potential applications.