Fabrication of functional silver loaded montmorillonite/polycarbonate with superhydrophobicity

• The Ag-Mt gave more chances for the formation of pores with appropriate size.
• The Ag-Mt also helped to fabricate a micro–nano-scaled superhydrophobic surface.
• The Ag-Mt/PC with Ag-Mt content of 1.5 wt.% showed a high water CA (152.5°).
• The Ag-Mt/PC-1.5 performed high catalytic activity on the degradation of MB.
• The durability and antibacterial activity of Ag-Mt/PC-1.5 were also excellent.

The polycarbonate (PC) solution was mixed with silver loaded modified montmorillonite (Ag-Mt) and then treated with 1,4-dimethylbenzene to obtain functional Ag-Mt/PC with superhydrophobicity. The Ag-Mt/PC with the Ag-Mt content of 1.5 wt.% showed a high water CA (152.5°) and excellent durability, the water CA decreased only 10% during a week's continuously water flow at the rate of 0.2 mL/s. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and surface area measurement results proved that the crystallization situation was more complicated on the interface of PC and Ag-Mt interlayer, resulted in different phase separation rate, provided more opportunity for the formation of pores with appropriate size diffusion, and finally fabricated a micro–nano-scaled surface with superhydrophobicity. Otherwise the Ag-Mt/PC performed high catalytic activity on the degradation reaction of methylene blue (the nearly complete degradation took only 25 min), slow release property and antibacterial activity on both Staphylococcus aureus ATCC6535 and Escherichia coli ATCC8739 (the mean diameter of inhibition zone was almost 50% larger than PC), which indicated that this simple and inexpensive approach could be more broadly applied to fabricate large-area functionalized surface via engineering materials with superhydrophobicity and utilize potential practical applications in the future.