Various

oils discharged from daily life and industrial production, as well as frequent

oil spillages, have led to severe water pollution and ecological problems.

Mussel-inspired polydopamine has been widely applied for fabrication of

superhydrophobic materials for oil/water separation. However, the need of

additional nanoparticles via tedious

steps to construct nanostructures, and the high cost of dopamine itself limit

its practical applications. Moreover, the application modes of superhydrophobic

materials for oil/water separation are monotonous, which will limit the applied

range of the superhydrophobic materials. For example, superhydrophobic sponge

was usually used for adsorbing oil droplets or oil spills from water, while

superhydrophobic fabric or mesh was usually used for separating bulk layered

oil/water mixture. Therefore, developing simple and low-cost mussel-inspired

surface modification strategy toward superhydrophobic materials, as well as

diverse application modes for oil/water separation, is still highly desired. In

this study, superhydrophobic sponge and fabric with nanostructures, which

exhibits excellent performance for diverse oil/water separation, have been

fabricated through a novel one-step and cost-effective mussel-inspired

approach. The resultant superhydrophobic sponge exhibits outstanding oil

absorption capability (weight gains up to 8860%), while the superhydrophobic

fabric can effectively separate oil/water mixture. Moreover, diverse modes for

oil/water separation have been developed for the first time. For example,

water-in-oil emulsion can be highly-efficient separated by a compressed

superhydrophobic sponge (~1800L m-2 h-1 bar-1

for water-in-oil emulsion, and above 99% rejection rate for water droplets),

while crude oil spills can be efficiently collected by a superhydrophobic boat

(above 98%).