The environmental hazards caused by oil-contaminated water has led to many research efforts in pursuit of high efficiency, low-cost methods which can effectively separate oil and water, with separation efficiencies that can exceed 99%. One promising route is the use of superhydrophobic materials which can allow for selective separation, due to the differences in chemical properties between oil (hydrophobic) and water (hydrophilic). Here, we present a simple and cost-effective PDMS-coated superhydrophobic filter that has been developed to separate liquids, both under the influence of gravity and via suction pressure. By varying the initial filter porosity and polymer coating thickness, the physical resilience and flux of the filter could be controlled and tailored to the intended application. The best performing filters were shown to have high separation efficiencies (> 98%), in addition to exhibiting the possibility for high fluid flux (up to 7504 L.m⁻².h⁻¹). The filters reported here displayed great potential for use in many application areas that require the separation of oils from water, either through straightforward filtration or integration into specialised devices.

油水污染对环境造成的危害促使许多研究努力追求高效、低成本的油水分离方法，分离效率可达99%以上。一种有前景的途径是使用超疏水材料，由于油（疏水）和水（亲水）之间的化学性质不同，因此可以进行选择性分离。在这里，我们展示了一种简单且具有成本效益的 PDMS 涂层超疏水过滤器，该过滤器已开发用于在重力和抽吸压力的影响下分离液体。通过改变初始过滤器孔隙率和聚合物涂层厚度，可以控制过滤器的物理弹性和流量，并根据预期应用进行调整。^-2 .h ^-1 )。此处报告的过滤器显示出在许多需要通过直接过滤或集成到专用设备中将油与水分离的应用领域的巨大潜力。