Abstract
The development of superhydrophobic metals has found many applications such as self-cleaning, anti-corrosion, anti-icing, and water transportation. Recently, femtosecond laser has been used to create nano/microstructures and wetting property changes. However, for some of the most common metals, such as aluminum, a relatively long aging process is required to obtain stable hydrophobicity. In this work, we introduce a combination of femtosecond laser ablation and heat treatment post-process, without using any harsh chemicals. We turn aluminum superhydrophobic within 30 minutes of heat treatment following femtosecond laser processing, and this is significantly shorter compared to conventional aging process of laser-ablated aluminum. The superhydrophobic surfaces maintain high contact angles greater than 160° and low sliding angles smaller than 5° over two months after the heat treatment. Moreover, the samples exhibit strong superhydrophobicity for various types of liquids (milk, coffee, CuPc, R6G, HCl, NaOH and CuCl2). The samples also show excellent self-healing and anti-corrosion properties. The mechanism for fast wettability conversion time is discussed. Our technique is a rapid process, reproducible, feasible for large-area fabrication, and environment-friendly.
Highlights
The harsh and moisture environment can accelerate corrosion for metals
When increasing the step size to 300 μm or 500 μm, the ablation lines with the deposited aluminum debris along two sides of these lines can be seen on the surface of the substrate
The Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) results showed the clear appearance of (–CH2–) bonding and (–CH3) bonding, which were similar to the case of the femtosecond-laser-ablated aluminum samples, which were put in the ambient air for one month since laser ablation
Summary
The harsh and moisture environment can accelerate corrosion for metals. Superhydrophobic surfaces, where water cannot stay on the surface, usually possess anti-corrosion effect. Aluminum requires 14–30 days to convert from superhydrophilicity to superhydrophobicity [14,15,16,17] Another approach is coating chemicals such as Teflon, lauric acid or other harsh chemicals, on the femtosecond-laser-ablated metal to reduce the surface energy without waiting for any aging time [18,19,20]. This approach requires a few hours to over one day for the coating process. The proposed technique demonstrated its reproductivity and feasibility of large-area fabrication
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