Waterborne organic silicone polyurethane with excellent self-healing performance for oil/water-separation and oil-recovery applications
Taoyan Mao, Hao Feng, Junrong Wu, Min Li, Luo Su, Jiale Chen, Xingchuan Wei, Peng Liu, Fengwei Xie
Abstract
While superhydrophobic coatings have been widely used for surface modification and protection, most suffer from relatively short service life due to the lack of self-healing mechanisms. Herein, a new self-healable coating formulation based on waterborne organic silicone polyurethane has been proposed by integrating disulfide groups into polyurethane molecules. The bulk polyurethane material with disulfide groups shows high self-healing efficiency of up to 90.8%. The polyurethane coating on cotton fabric showed high superhydrophobic performance even after severe damage. Furthermore, the coating showed excellent self-healing ability. The damaged surface could self-heal after heating at 80 °C for half an hour. The coating also exhibited excellent superhydrophobicity and extremely high oil/water-separation efficiency, even after experiencing 80 washes or being worn 800 times. The combination of superior self-healing ability and superhydrophobic properties of the waterborne organic silicone polyurethane coating provides a general approach for the long-term application of such coatings in harsh environments.