Uniform and stable electrophoretic deposition of graphene oxide on steel mesh: Low temperature thermal treatment for switching from superhydrophilicity to superhydrophobicity

Electrophoretic‐deposited Superhydrophobic Coatings

“…Several studies utilized one‐step EPD to fabricate SHPC carbon nanomaterials‐based coating that includes graphene oxide/titania (GO/TiO 2 ), [105] metal NPs decorated carbon nanotubes (CNTs), [106] carbon micro/nanosphere film, [107] and GO coating on stainless steel (SS) mesh [108] . In most of these studies, SHPY was readily achieved after a high‐temperature reduction step (100–300 °C) (loss of hydrophilic functional groups) [105,108] . Balram et al., attributed the SHPY to the combined impact of multiscale surface roughness and adsorption of hydrophobic molecules from the environment [106] .…”

“…Most of the reported works used steel samples as the substrate electrode for EPD that includes mild steel (MS), [97,126] SS, [100,102,106,110,111,117,127,131,133,135–137] or SS mesh [108,134,138] . Several works employed Al including Al plate, [101,103,105,116,124] flexible Al foil, [111] laser‐etched Al, [128] and Al alloys [96,98,136] .…”

“…The method is attractive when the interference of low SE polymers need to be avoided. Most of the reports discussed in this section, [105–108] employed a thermal annealing step (200‐350 °C) whereas a few works used the typical low SE processing [111,113] …”

“…The SHPC mesh showed decent long‐term air exposure (∼9 months), and mechanical (SiC emery paper, 80 grifts, 100 g, 700 mm) durability. However, the film showed low chemical stability in strongly acidic solutions (2 M HCl) [108] …”

“…Among the different oil/water removal approaches, the oil removing method is preferable as oil is typically the minor component. The material (oil removing filters or oil absorbents) should be SHPC and underwater superoleophilic (SOPL) to remove oil from water [49,66,108,138] …”