Waterborne organic silicone polyurethane with excellent self-healing performance for oil/water-separation and oil-recovery applications

While superhydrophobic coatings have been widely used for surface modification and protection, most suffer from relatively short service life due to the lack of self-healing mechanisms. Herein, a new self-healable coating formulation based on waterborne organic silicone polyurethane has been proposed by integrating disulfide groups into polyurethane molecules. The bulk polyurethane material with disulfide groups shows high self-healing efficiency of up to 90.8%. The polyurethane coating on cotton fabric showed high superhydrophobic performance even after severe damage. Furthermore, the coating showed excellent self-healing ability. The damaged surface could self-heal after heating at 80 °C for half an hour. The coating also exhibited excellent superhydrophobicity and extremely high oil/water-separation efficiency, even after experiencing 80 washes or being worn 800 times. The combination of superior self-healing ability and superhydrophobic properties of the waterborne organic silicone polyurethane coating provides a general approach for the long-term application of such coatings in harsh environments.