Multifunctional superhydrophobic conductive sponge for real-time monitoring of oil-water separation and amphibious human activity

Composite materials with porous structures show good application prospects in the field of oil-water separation because it is beneficial for oil absorption and storage. However, it is still a challenge to achieve real-time monitoring during oil-water separation and amphibious monitoring of human motion. In this paper, a multifunctional sponge PDMS/rGO/PDA/MS with superhydrophobic and pressure perception properties was prepared by the dip-and-dry method. The multifunctional sponge exhibits excellent resistance to physical and chemical superhydrophobicity, including good chemical inertness (pH=2/13), robustness (10 anti-friction cycles), and compressibility (100 anti-compression cycles). Meanwhile, the multifunctional sponge showed good stability of pressure perception, including accurate identification of different pressures (200∼2000 Pa) and frequency (0.1∼0.5 Hz) of compression and fast response/recovery time (360/219 ms). Benefiting from its porous structure, durable super-hydrophobicity, and pressure sensing properties, the multifunctional sponge enables gravity-assisted oil-water separation of light/heavy oil, gravity/water pressure sensing, real-time monitoring of oil-water separation and amphibious monitoring of human movement. Therefore, this sponge shows potential as a new generation of multifunctional sponges with applications in oil-water separation and amphibious monitoring.