Solar-Heating Crassula-Peforata-Structured Superoleophilic CuO@CuS/PDMS Nanowire Arrays on Copper Foam for Fast Remediation of Viscous Crude Oil Spill.

In nature, leaf photosynthesis is the most common solar energy conversion system, which contains light absorption and conversion processes. Most interestingly, the leaves of green plant are almost lamellar. Herein, inspired by the structure and light conversion capacity of plants, we developed the crassula-peforata-structured CuO@CuS/polydimethylsiloxane (CuO@CuS/PDMS) nanowire arrays (NWAs) on copper foam (CF) with effective light to heat capacity to clean-up viscous crude oil (~105 mPa s) by in-suit reducing the viscosity of crude oil. The crassula-peforata-structured CuO@CuS/PDMS core/shell NWAs were grown on copper foam with high density and uniformity, exhibiting excellent light adsorption and photothermal conversion efficiency. When simulated sunlight irradiate on the structure of the CuO@CuS/PDMS NWAs/CF, abundant heat was generated and in situ reduced the viscosity of crude oil, which prominently increase the oil-diffusion coefficient and speed up the oil-sorption rate. The oil-recovery procedure can realize continuous clean-up at the assistance of a pump device and the crude oil adsorption capacity can reach up to 15.57×105 g m-3 during 5 mins adsorption process. The high-performance photothermal self-heated superoleophilic CuO@CuS/PDMS NWAs/CF is promising to promote the practical application of the sorbents in the clean-up of viscous crude oil spills.