Facile construction of durable superhydrophobic cellulose paper for oil–water separation.

With oil pollution in water posing a serious threat to the ecosystem, it's of great importance to explore superhydrophobic materials that are environment-friendly and easy to obtain for oil–water separation. Herein, we report a novel one-step silanization strategy to fabricate superhydrophobic cellulose paper based on the air-induced vertical polymerization of a long-chain alkyltrichlorosilane. The as-prepared paper exhibited remarkable superhydrophobicity with a water contact angle of ~ 165° and a water sliding angle of ~ 1.9° owing to the formation of micro/nanostructured, honeycomb-like polyorganosiloxane agglomerates anchored on the surface. Moreover, when subjected to strong acid/alkali solutions and mechanical forces (sonication and sandpaper abrasion), the superhydrophobic paper showed excellent durability. Due to the extreme wetting properties, namely superhydrophobicity and superoleophilicity, such paper could be used for selectively separating oil from various oil/water mixtures. The proposed method for fabricating superhydrophobic paper has many advantages in terms of cost, simplicity and scalability, making it very promising for real-world application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]