One-Step Preparation of Robust Superhydrophobic Foam for Oil/Water Separation by Pulse Electrodeposition

Frequent leakage and pollution of oily wastewater seriously affect the world's ecosystem safety and economic development, which prompts us to urgently develop a highly effective, low-cost, wear-resistant, chemically stable, and environmentally friendly new functional material for oil/water separation. In this paper, a robust superhydrophobic material was successfully electrodeposited on the porous copper foam substrates in myristic acid (CH₃(CH₂)₁₂COOH) and lanthanum chloride (LaCl₃·6H₂O) electrodeposition solution under a continuous pumping circulation and rotation condition. Moreover, SEM, EDS, XRD, FTIR, and XPS technologies were utilized to characterize the surface morphology and chemical composition information. The superhydrophobic property was evaluated by optical contact angle instrument and high-speed camera. It turned out that the micro/nanostructures were mainly composed of lanthanum myristate, and static CA of superhydrophobic copper foam (SCF) was up to 165.2° with SA ≈ 2°. Besides, the SCF exhibited a better performance with good anticorrosion, excellent chemical stability, and outstanding mechanical stability. Furthermore, the SCF can achieve up to 98.6% oil/water separation efficiency. More importantly, by employing this novel processing method, it can effectively save time and provide a promising potential way to make denser and thicker foams for continuous oil/water separation and may be easily applied to other conductive metal matrix materials.