Meet the OHM Sponge. This Oleophilic (likes oil), Hydrophobic (hates water), Magnetic porous material can be used to separate oil and water.  This material can absorb 30x its weight in oil, making it an ideal material for recovering oil from a spill. The sponge’s exceptional properties come from the nanomaterials attached to the sponge. Nanomaterials are so small (on the order of 100 atoms) that they have different properties than their bulk (normal sized) counter parts. For the OHM sponge we are using iron-oxide nanoparticles, which due to their size have exceptional magnetic susceptibility, meaning they can be pulled easily by a magnet. In this image, the bright green spots are the illuminated iron-oxide nanoparticles.

Stephanie Ribet

Department of Material Science and Engineering

Tools & Techniques: EPIC SEM FEI Quanta 650