Stimuli-Responsive Composite Particles as Solid-Stabilizers for Effective Oil Harvesting

The polymer-grafted magnetic composite particles have been synthesized and developed to harvest oil by use of their speical wettability. Different from gravity-driven oil-water separation, the prepared polymer brushes-grafted magnetic composite particles can act as solid-stabilizers that diffuse to the oil-water interfical region and effectively minimize the direct oil-water interfical area by volume exclusion, whereas the magnetic Fe3O4 core allows easy separation of Pickering emulsions from oil-water mixture under an external magnetic field. When the emulsions were heated from room temperature to 50 °C, the coil-to-globule transition of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) acts as the driving force for the destabilization of the emulsion, thereby achieving the release of oil. The novel materials can be used in aspects of oil-water separation, inducing oil droplet transport and release of lipophilic substrates.