Facile preparations of superhydrophobic coatings with self-cleaning, mechanical durability, anticorrosion and easy-repairable properties

Abstract

A facile and scalable way was developed to successfully prepare multifunctional superhydrophobic coatings (SHCs) by a one-step spraying method. The SHCs could be quickly coated on various substrates on a large scale and cured at room temperature. The as-prepared SHCs exhibited outstanding self-cleaning ability and chemical stability, and special optical properties underwater such as the silver-mirror and black-hole effects. Moreover, the SHCs had excellent anticorrosion property with a protection efficiency of 98.7% for the bare 2a12 Al alloys. Furthermore, the SHCs exhibited excellent mechanical durability and good adhesion strength to the substrate after mechanical abrasion test against 1000 grit SiC sandpaper for 1.0 m at the applied pressure of 5 kPa and scratch test. Additionally, the superhydrophobicity of SHCs could be regenerated by a simple spraying repair process after some severe abrasions, indicating a strong easy-repairable property. The present study therefore suggests that such versatile SHCs are promising for various practical applications in different fields.