| Details: |
Superhydrophobic surfaces are gaining rising demands in various industrial sectors including consumer electronics, optical, transportation, medical, electrical and home appliances. Given the significant use of these surfaces in diverse applications, the robustness of these surfaces in terms of adhesion and durability becomes highly important. In this paper, these issues have been addressed onsuperhydrophobic thin films fabricated on aluminum,copper and steel substrates by different chemical process namely, (i) chemical etching followed by passivation with organic acid molecules as well as plasma coatings;(ii) electrophoretic deposition (EPD)of functionalized ZnO nanoparticles and (iii) electrodeposition of TiO2 nanoparticles based organic-inorganic composite materials as well as metals followed by passivation with organic coating and (v) sol-gel process. The physical and compositional analyses of the deposited thin films were characterized by SEM/EDX, ATR-FTIR, XRD as well as contact angle goniometer.The corrosion properties of the superhydrophobic thin films were analyzed with both polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) in 3.5 wt.%NaClaqueous solutions. The results demonstrate that the superhydrophobic thin films on metals display better anti-corrosion properties than the as-received metalsubstrates. Metal-organic composite thin films based on TiO2 nanoparticles are found to be not only superhydrophobic, but alsoresistant to UV exposure. The zinc stearate nanocomposite superhydrophobic coating,providing a drag reduction of coefficient 16% lower than as-received surfaces. These coatings also have shown reduced ice adhesion properties. |