ISSN print edition: 0366-6352 ISSN electronic edition: 1336-9075 Registr. No.: MK SR 9/7 Published monthly

Zinc oxide rod-coated cotton fabric: a super-hydrophobic material for self-cleaning and oil/water separation

Diptonil Banerjee, Alok Kumar Anand, Shraboni Ghosh, Nirmalya Sankar Das, Bisswajit Das, Uttam Kumar Ghorai, and Kalyan Kumar Chattopadhyay

Faculty of Engineering and Computing Sciences, Teerthanker Mahaveer University, Moradabad, India

E-mail: nilju82@gmail.com

Received: 19 February 2022  Accepted: 23 March 2022

Abstract:

A low-temperature deposition of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanorod has been reported on commercially available cotton fabrics. Field emission scanning electron microscope was used to investigate the morphological evolution of the ZnO with deposition time. X-ray diffraction confirms the crystallinity of the sample. Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopic study analysed the different bonding present. The as-synthesized samples showed good hydrophobic properties which got significantly worse for the sample synthesized for the highest time duration. The surface energies of the samples have been calculated using conventional Young’s equation. The sample was further modified by simple stearic acid treatment. Also, it is seen that the samples, thus prepared partially to allow oil over water to pass, thus become a material of potential regarding oil–water separation. Detail theoretical calculation has been done in order to find the surface energy and its effect on the observed hydrophobicity.

Keywords: Zinc oxide; Cotton fabrics; Hydrophobicity; Oil–water separation

Full paper is available at www.springerlink.com.

DOI: 10.1007/s11696-022-02192-2

Chemical Papers 76 (8) 4679–4690 (2022)