Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is widely utilized in material science, chemical engineering, and environmental science due to its excellent properties. By utilizing fillers, so-called composite materials can be obtained with enhanced mechanical, wettability, or thermal conductivity performance. Here, we present a simple, cost-effective approach to vary either the mechanical properties (Young's modulus) or surface wettability of bulk PDMS and PDMS sponges simply by adding nanodiamond filler with different surface terminations, either oxidized (oND) or hydrogenated (reduced, rND) nanodiamond. Minuscule amounts of oxidized nanodiamond particles as filler showed to benefit the compressive Young's modulus of composite sponges with up to a 52% increase in its value, while the wettability of composite sponges was unaffected. In contrast, adding reduced nanodiamond particles to PDMS yielded inclined water contact angles on the PDMS/nanodiamond composite sponges. Finally, we show that the PDMS/rND composites are readily utilized as an absorbent for oil/water separation problems. This signifies that the surface termination of the ND particle has a crucial effect on the performance of the composite.
Keywords: infrared (IR) spectroscopy; mechanical properties; nanocomposite; nanodiamond; oil/water separation; surface wettability.