Robust superhydrophobic cotton fabrics based on nano-silica particles hybrid epoxy resin: self-cleaning, anti-fouling, anti-abrasion and oil–water separation

The design strategy of this study, using epoxy resin (EP) with excellent chemical/mechanical stability as a raw material, can obtain robust superhydrophobic cotton fabrics. Firstly, two different properties of nano-silica particles (nano-SiO2 microspheres and nano-SiO2 sols) were obtained by the sol–gel method. The hydrophobicity of cotton fabric can be significantly improved by hybridizing EP with nano-SiO2 particles to construct a robust rough structure of cotton fabric. At the same time, the introduction of the low surface energy substance octadecylamine, which can form intermolecular crosslinking with dodecyltrimethoxysilane and EP by hydrogen bonding, was introduced and the hydrophobicity of cotton fabric was further improved. It was concluded that these superhydrophobic cotton fabrics could withstand 10 sandpaper abrasion tests and different pH solution treatments with a certain degree of chemical/mechanical stability performance. The as-prepared cotton fabric exhibited excellent separation efficiency for dichloromethane/water mixtures. The reactive yellow SNE (200%) dye as a contaminant can be easily carried away by water droplets and has an excellent self-cleaning effect. The superhydrophobic cotton fabric that was prepared in this way repelled the stain solution and showed excellent stain resistance. The results indicated that these superhydrophobic cotton fabrics had excellent properties of self-cleaning, anti-fouling, anti-abrasion and oil–water separation. In addition, the superhydrophobic cotton fabric obtained by simple preparation has a wide range of promising applications for self-cleaning in households, industrial activities and outdoor decoration.