Abstract
The massive and long-term service of 5083 aluminum alloy (AA5083) is restricted by several shortcomings in marine and industrial environments, such as proneness to localized corrosion attack, surface contamination, etc. Herein, we report a facile and cost-effective strategy to transform intrinsic hydrophilicity into water-repellent superhydrophobicity, combining fluorine-free chemisorption of a hydrophobic agent with etching texture. Dual-scale hierarchical structure, surface height relief and surface chemical elements were studied by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), successively. Detailed investigations of the wetting property, self-cleaning effect, NaCl-particle self-propelling, corrosion and long-term behavior of the consequent superhydrophobic AA5083 surface were carried out, demonstrating extremely low adhesivity and outstanding water-repellent, self-cleaning and corrosion-resisting performance with long-term stability. We believe that the low cost, scalable and fluorine-free transforming of metallic surface wettability into waterproof superhydrophobicity is a possible strategy towards anti-contamination and marine anti-corrosion.
Highlights
Metals and their alloys are central engineering materials in numerous industrial fields
In recent years, inspired from the unique water-repellent property of natural organisms [5,6,7,8,9], the artificial fabrication of bionic superhydrophobic surfaces attracted intensive attention of scientists and engineers owing to their multi-functional applications, such as self-cleaning [10,11], oil–water
We report a facile, cost-effective and non-fluorinated fabrication strategy to prepare a superhydrophobic surface on an AA5083 substrate by combining etching texture and a hexadecyltrimethoxysilane (HDTMS) hydrophobic molecules assembly
Summary
Metals and their alloys are central engineering materials in numerous industrial fields. Transforming surface wettability from intrinsic hydrophilicity to water-repellent superhydrophobicity is considered to be a possible strategy resisting marine corrosion attacks [26,27]. Much efforts [28,29,30,31] have been devoted to exploring the fabrication and investigating the consequent corrosion-resistant behavior of a superhydrophobic surface on aluminum/aluminum alloy substrates. Only limited attempts have been achieved to develop scalable and fluorine-free superhydrophobic aluminum surfaces for marine corrosion protection. These issues push us to explore a cost effective, facile and non-fluorinated approach, transforming intrinsically hydrophilic AA5083 with a Wenzel contact [37,38]. Wetting property, self-cleaning ability, corrosion-resisting behavior and long-term stability were investigated to display the typical characteristics and promising functional applications
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