High mechanical strength aluminum foam epoxy resin composite material with superhydrophobic, anticorrosive and wear-resistant surface

Abstract

By combining organic materials with metal materials, it is easy to obtain new composite materials with excellent properties. Here, an excellent performance aluminum foam epoxy resin composite material (AFE) was prepared by heat-assisted vacuum infusion technology. Owing to the unique foam structure of aluminum foam (AF) and excellent physical and chemical properties of modified epoxy resin, the AFE with an interpenetrating network structure shows excellent wear resistance, bending resistance and corrosion resistance. The SEM images show that the filling efficiency of epoxy resin to AF is over 99%, and the epoxy resin was tightly combined with the metal foam. The surface and mechanical properties test results show that AFE has excellent mechanical properties and high wear resistance, the maximum bending σb and tensile strength σt can reach 74.33 MPa and 42.09 MPa, respectively, and the minimum wear rate Ws is 8.231 × 10−4 mm3/Nm. Tafel polarization curve and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) results show that the AFE has excellent corrosion resistance, with corrosion current icorr as low as 1.399 × 10−9 A•cm−2 and Z0.01 Hz as high as 7.74 × 107 Ω•cm2 after superhydrophobic treatment process.