A electro-deposition process for fabrication of biomimetic super-hydrophobic surface and its corrosion resistance on magnesium alloy

• DOI: 10.1016/j.electacta.2014.01.135
• Publication Date: 2014-02-08T11:45:18Z
• Authors: Yan Liu; Xiaoming Yin; Jijia Zhang; Sirong Yu; Zhiwu Han; Luquan Ren
• Keywords: Plating (geology); Stearic acid; Superhydrophobic coating

Abstract Super-hydrophobic surface has many special functions that are studied wildly. The ingenious microstructures of typical plant leaves with super-hydrophobicity enlighten researchers to design and fabricate artificial super-hydrophobic surface. Being the lightest alloy among structural metals materials magnesium alloy was restricted due to its poor corrosion resistance. A super-hydrophobic surface with self-cleaning was successfully deposited on AZ91D magnesium alloy by the nickel plating process. The super-hydrophobic surfaces were covered with cauliflower-like cluster binary micro-nano structural Ni coatings. The procedure was that the samples were processed by plating after pretreatment, finally modified by stearic acid (CH 3 (CH 2 ) 16 COOH). The surface morphologies, chemical composition, wettability and corrosion resistance are characterized by means of SEM, FT-IR, water contact angle and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurements. The as-prepared super-hydrophobic surface has a contact angle as high as 160.8 ± 1° and a SA as low as 1.8 ± 1°, showing good long-term stability. The super-hydrophobic surface exhibited excellent corrosion resistance property in the 3.5 wt. % NaCl solution. This method could provide a straightforward and effective route to fabricate large-area super-hydrophobic surface with anticorrosion and self-cleaning for a great number of potential applications, and easily extended to other metal materials.