CATEGORY: REMEDIATION
ACS Nano, 2012, 6 (5), pp 4445–4451
Superhydrophobic
Alkanethiol-Coated Microsubmarines for Effective Removal of Oil
Maria Guix†‡, Jahir Orozco†, Miguel García†§, Wei Gao†, Sirilak
Sattayasamitsathit†, Arben Merkoçi‡, Alberto Escarpa§, and Joseph Wang†*
josephwang@ucsd.edu
† Department of Nanoengineering, University of California−San Diego, La Jolla,
California 92093, United States
‡ ICREA & Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology, Campus University Autónoma
of Barcelona, E-08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain
§ Department of Analytical Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of
Alcalá, E-28871 Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain
Abstract
Demonstrates
the use of artificial nanomachines for effective interaction, capture,
transport, and removal of oil droplets. The simple nanomachine-enabled oil
collection method is based on modifying microtube engines with a
superhydrophobic layer able to adsorb oil by means of its strong adhesion to a
long chain of self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of alkanethiols created on the
rough gold outer surface of the device.
The resultant SAM-coated Au/Ni/PEDOT/Pt microsubmarine displays
continuous interaction with large oil droplets and is capable of loading and
transporting multiple small oil droplets. The influence of the alkanethiol
chain length, polarity, and head functional group and hence of the surface
hydrophobicity upon the oil–nanomotor interaction and the propulsion is
examined. No such oil–motor interactions were observed in control experiments
involving both unmodified microengines and microengines coated with SAM layers
containing a polar terminal group. These results demonstrate that such
SAM-Au/Ni/PEDOT/Pt micromachines can be useful for a facile, rapid, and
efficient collection of oils in water samples, which can be potentially
exploited for other water–oil separation systems. The integration of
oil-sorption properties into self-propelled microengines holds great promise
for the remediation of oil-contaminated water samples and for the isolation of
other hydrophobic targets, such as drugs.
Free Full Text Source: http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/nn301175b
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