Polydimethylsiloxane-Based Superhydrophobic Surfaces on Steel Substrate: Fabrication, Reversibly Extreme Wettability and Oil-Water Separation.

Functional surfaces for reversibly switchable wettability and oil-water separation have attracted much interest with pushing forward an immense influence on fundamental research and industrial application in recent years. This article proposed a facile method to fabricate superhydrophobic surfaces on steel substrates via electroless replacement deposition of copper sulfate (CuSO4) and UV curing of vinyl-terminated polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). PDMS-based superhydrophobic surfaces exhibited water contact angle (WCA) close to 160° and water sliding angle (WSA) lower than 5°, preserving outstanding chemical stability that maintained superhydrophobicity immersing in different aqueous solutions with pH values from 1 to 13 for 12 h. Interestingly, the superhydrophobic surface could dramatically switch to the superhydrophilic state under UV irradiation and then gradually recover to the highly hydrophobic state with WCA at 140° after dark storage. The underlying mechanism was also investigated by scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Additionally, the PDMS-based steel mesh possessed high separation efficiency and excellent reusability in oil-water separation. Our studies provide a simple, fast, and economical fabrication method for wettability-transformable superhydrophobic surfaces and have the potential applications in microfluidics, the biomedical field, and oil spill cleanup.