Non‐destructive production of natural environment‐adaptive super‐hydrophobic hierarchical ceramic surface on a steel substrate

Abstract

A super-hydrophobic ceramic surface with excellent adaptability to the natural environment was developed on a metal substrate through a facile electrophoretic deposition approach. Alumina, as a demonstrating low cost ceramic material, was electrophoretically deposited on a steel surface to form a hierarchical surface structure. After the treatment with stearic acid, the as-fabricated surface exhibits a high water contact angle and very low sliding angle, revealing a super hydrophobicity. Furthermore, the surface can maintain the super hydrophobicity with liquids of different pH values, performing good natural environment adaptability.

Electrophoretic‐deposited Superhydrophobic Coatings

“…The microsized convexes on the blasted steel surface and the deposited Al 2 O 3 particles created a hierarchical surface structuring; the surface after SA modification displayed Cθ of 150° and Sθ<3°. The corresponding Cθs of SA‐modified bare SS and blasted SS were ∼103.7±3° and 140.6±2°, respectively [133] …”

“…Most of the reported works used steel samples as the substrate electrode for EPD that includes mild steel (MS), [97,126] SS, [100,102,106,110,111,117,127,131,133,135–137] or SS mesh [108,134,138] . Several works employed Al including Al plate, [101,103,105,116,124] flexible Al foil, [111] laser‐etched Al, [128] and Al alloys [96,98,136] .…”