Multifunctional coatings are in urgent demand in emerging fields. In this work, nanocomposite coatings with extraordinary self-cleaning, antiwear, and anticorrosion properties were prepared on aluminum substrate by a facile spraying technique. Core-shell structured polyaniline/functionalized carbon nanotubes (PANI/fCNTs) composite and nanosized silica were synergistically integrated into ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE) matrix to construct lotus-leaf-like structures, and 1H,1H,2H,2H- perfluorooctyltriethoxysilane (POTS) was used to decrease the surface energy. The composite coating with 6 wt % PANI/fCNTs possesses superamphiphobic property, with contact angles of 167°, 163°, and 159° toward water, glycerol, and ethylene glycol, respectively. This coating demonstrates stable nonwetting performance over a wide temperature range (<400 °C), as well as outstanding self-cleaning ability to prevent contamination by sludge, concentrated H2SO4, and ethylene glycol. Superamphiphobic surface property could be maintained even after 45 000 times abrasion or bending test for 30 times. The coating displayed strong adhesive ability (grade 1 according to the GB/T9286) on the etched aluminum plate. The superamphiphobic surface could be retained after immersion in 1 mol/L HCl and 3.5 wt % NaCl solutions for 60 and 90 d, respectively. It should be noted that this coating reveals significantly improved anticorrosion performance as compared to the bare ETFE coating and ETFE composite coating without PANI/fCNTs. Such coatings with integrated functionalities offer promising self-cleaning and anticorrosion applications under erosive/abrasive environment.

Inspired by the adhesive proteins in mussels, a novel electrodeposition route has been developed to create multifunctional zinc (Zn)/ polydopamine (pDop)/ n-dodecyl mercaptan (NDM) composite coatings on different substrates, where oxidative polymerization of dopamine was simultaneously integrated during electrodeposition process. Hierarchical cauliflower-like structure was obtained on the electrodeposited Zn/pDop coatings. After modification with NDM, the prepared Zn/pDop/NDM coatings on different substrates (steel, Al and Cu) possessed excellent superhydrophobicity, exhibiting a maximum water contact angle (WCA) of 167.6° and a sliding angle (SA) less than 1° on the steel substrate.

Superamphiphobic and electroactive composite coating on aluminum substrate was successfully fabricated by integrating epoxy, polyaniline (PANI), fluorinated ethylene propylene, carbon nanotubes and SiO2 nanoparticles into a two-layer coating configuration with nano/micro hierarchical surface structure. The composite coating demonstrates strong adhesion, excellent wear resistance and durable anti-wettability. The electrochemical tests demonstrated significantly enhanced anticorrosion performance by surface barrier effect of the superamphiphobic coating and redox catalytic capability of embedded electroactive PANI. The design principle of the multi-functional coatings will definitely benefit the advancement of durable anti-corrosive coatings and the achieved superior properties will promise a wider engineering applications in petroleum related industries.

No abstract

Please cite this article in press as: X. Zhang, et al., Fabrication of durable fluorine-free superhydrophobic polyethersulfone (PES) composite coating enhanced by assembled MMT-SiO 2 nanoparticles, Appl. Surf. Sci. (2016), http://dx. a b s t r a c tA durable fluorine-free polyethersulfone (PES) superhydrophobic composite coating with excellent wearresistant and anti-corrosion properties has been successfully fabricated by combining sol-gel and spray technology. The robust micro/nano-structures of the prepared surface were established by introducing binary montmorillonite-silica (MMT-SiO 2 ) assembled composite particles, which were formed by in-situ growth of SiO 2 on MMT surfaces via sol-gel. Combined with the low surface energy of amino silicon oil (APDMS), the fluorine-free superhydrophoic PES coating was obtained with high water contact angle 156.1 ± 1.1 • and low sliding angle 4.8 ± 0.7 • .The anti-wear of the final PES/APDMS/MMT-SiO 2 superhydrophobic coating can reach up to 60,100 cycles, which is outdistancing the pure PES coating (6800 cycles) and the PES/MMT/SiO 2 coating prepared by simple physical mixture (18,200 cycles). The enhanced wear resistance property can be mainly attributed to the lubrication performance of APDMS and stable interface bonding force between the MMT surface and SiO 2 . Simultaneously, potentiodynamic polarization curves and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy exhibited the outstanding anti-corrosion property of PES/APDMS/MMT-SiO 2 composite coating, with low corrosion current (1.6 × 10 −10 A/cm 2 ) and high protection efficiency (99.999%) even after 30 d immersion process. These test results show that this durable superhydrophobic PES composite coating can be hopefully to provide the possibility of industrial application.