Issue 8, 2011
From the journal:

RSC Advances

Nanoparticle decorated fibrous silica membranes exhibiting biomimetic superhydrophobicity and highly flexible properties

Fan Zhao,†abc   Xianfeng Wang,†ac   Bin Ding,*abd   Jinyou Lin,ac   Juanping Hu,a   Yang Si,a   Jianyong Yud  and  Gang Sune  

* Corresponding authors

a State Key Laboratory for Modification of Chemical Fibers and Polymer Materials, Donghua University, Shanghai, China
E-mail: binding@dhu.edu.cn

b Key Laboratory of High Performance Fibers and Products, Ministry of Education, Donghua University, Shanghai, China

c College of Textiles, Donghua University, Shanghai, China

d Nanomaterials Research Center, Modern Textile Institute, Donghua University, Shanghai, China

e Fibers and Polymer Science, University of California, Davis, California, USA

Abstract

Inspired by the self-cleaning lotus leaf, here we report the fabrication of flexible fluorinated silica nanofibrous membranes with biomimetic non-wettable surfaces by electrospinning blend solutions of poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and silica gel in the presence of silica nanoparticles, followed by calcination and fluoroalkylsilane (FAS) modification. The resultant silica nanofibers exhibited a lotus-leaf-like structure with numerous nanoparticles decorated on the fiber surfaces due to the rapid phase separation in electrospinning and calcination processing. The content of silica nanoparticles incorporated into the fibers proved to be the key factor affecting the fiber surface morphology and wettability. The fluorinated silica fibrous membranes containing 38.8 wt% silica nanoparticle showed the highest water contact angle (WCA) of 155°, oil contact angle (OCA) of 143°, orange juice contact angle (OJCA) of 142°, and milk contact angle (MCA) of 137°. Additionally, the fluorinated silica membranes exhibited good flexibility and the flexibility was also characterized by KES-FB2S. We believe that this new class of inorganic membranes is particularly promising for the development of high-temperature filtration, novel easy-clean coatings, and even flexible electronics.

Graphical abstract: Nanoparticle decorated fibrous silica membranes exhibiting biomimetic superhydrophobicity and highly flexible properties

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Article information

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1039/C1RA00605C
Article type
Paper
Submitted
18 Aug 2011
Accepted
08 Sep 2011
First published
21 Oct 2011

RSC Adv., 2011,1, 1482-1488

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Nanoparticle decorated fibrous silica membranes exhibiting biomimetic superhydrophobicity and highly flexible properties

F. Zhao, X. Wang, B. Ding, J. Lin, J. Hu, Y. Si, J. Yu and G. Sun, RSC Adv., 2011, 1, 1482 DOI: 10.1039/C1RA00605C

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