One-step solvent-free fabrication of superhydrophobic cellulose powder with reversible wettability

Superhydrophobic cellulose-based products show tremendous potential applications in both industries and researches owing to their inherent biodegradability, non-toxicity, and cost-effectiveness. However, previous studies mainly focused on superhydrophobic cellulose bulk materials rather than universal cellulose powder. Though some methods have been proposed for preparing superhydrophobic cellulose powder, their fabricating processes involve plenty of high-toxic organic solvents. In this work, we proposed a facile one-step solvent-free method to prepare superhydrophobic cellulose powder. The modified cellulose powder shows not only superhydrophobicity but also reversible wettability. Moreover, the superhydrophobic cellulose shows immense UV resistance by enduring 60 h UV radiation. The superhydrophobic cellulose powder-coated cotton fabric could separate oil/water mixture with high efficiency and reusability. This work provides a green method to produce superhydrophobic cellulose powder which can be used as a raw material for sophisticated multifunctional material fabrication in future.