The current available superhydrophobic modification techniques that utilize mussel-inspired polydopamine
(pDA) to construct hierarchical structures require the addition of nanoparticles or the usage of a high
concentration of dopamine. These requirements are expensive and therefore lower the application
efficiency. Herein, for the first time, a superhydrophobic fabric was prepared by a novel and simplemussel-inspired strategy with a much lower concentration of dopamine without any additionalnanoparticles. Folic acid (FA) was first applied to a surface to induce the formation of rough pDAcoatings with hierarchical structures. These hierarchical structures can be readily controlled by adjustingFA concentration or coating duration. After octadecylamine (ODA) chemical manipulation, the obtainedfabric exhibited water contact and rolling off angles of about 162 and 7, respectively, indicating that itwas endowed with superhydrophobicity. Importantly, the superhydrophobic fabric can withstandcontinuous and drastic 3.5 wt% NaCl solution rinses and repeated tearing with an adhesive tape morethan 30 times, suggesting that it has excellent durability. This novel mussel-inspired strategy can facilelyand cost-effectively realize superhydrophobic manipulation and tailoring of materials. Moreover, anenergy-saving and highly-efficient mini boat fabricated from our novel superhydrophobic fabric wasutilized for self-driven oil spill cleanup. The boat can automatically recycle crude oil spills while floatingfreely on water with a cleanup rate of crude oil spill up to 97.1%, demonstrating great potential inenvironmental remediation. The novel strategy designed in this study will inspire the fast development ofmussel-inspired superhydrophobic materials for applications in various fields.
