Durability and Wear Resistance of Laser-Textured Hardened Stainless Steel Surfaces with Hydrophobic Properties

Abstract

Hydrophobic surfaces are of high interest to industry. While surface functionalization has attracted a significant interest, both from industry and research, the durability of engineered surfaces remains a challenge, as wear and scratches deteriorate their functional response. In this work, a cost-effective combination of surface engineering processes on stainless steel was investigated.Low temperature plasma surface alloying was applied to increase surface hardness from 172 to 305 HV. Then, near-infrared nanosecond laser patterning was deployed to fabricate channel-like patterns that enabled superhydrophobicity. Abrasion tests were carried out to examine the durability of such engineered surfaces during daily use. In particular, the evolution of surface topographies, chemical composition and water contact angle with increasing abrasion cycles were studied. Hydrophobicity deteriorated progressively on both hardened and raw stainless steel samples, suggesting that the major contributing factor to hydrophobicity was the surface chemical composition. At the same time, the samples with increased surface hardness exhibited a slower deterioration of their topographies when compared with non-treated surfaces. A conclusion is made about the durability of laser-textured hardened stainless steel surfaces produced by applying the proposed combined surface engineering approach.

Femtosecond laser-induced sub-micron and multi-scale topographies for durable lubricant impregnated surfaces for food packaging applications

“…However, CAs significantly increased over a period of two weeks to reach the respective values of 113 o and 138 o . This can be explained with the exposure of laser textured SS substrates to the ambient environmental conditions and the accumulation of carbon from CO2 decomposition on surfaces that lowered the surface energy as reported in previous research [42][43]. It is important to stress that the CA measurements on thermoplastic substrates were stable over the same time period of 2 weeks.…”

Experimental investigation of processing disturbances in laser surface patterning

“…A pilot implementation of the proposed methodology required three set of samples to be produced as described in Section 2.1. The patterns selected for this empirical study are channellike structures that are commonly used and also investigated by many researchers for fabricating surfaces with a hydrophobic functional response [30][31][32][33].…”

Friction and Wear Behavior of Copper‐graphite Composites with Different Compositions in Water Environments

“…Researchers have been inspired by the hydrophobic properties from natural plants, and applied them to many fields of abrasion and wear resistance. [9][10] The application of hydrophobic surfaces on copper-graphite materials makes it possible to reduce their wear rate in rainy and snowy weather, which has important practical significance. The chemical etching method is excellent for obtaining a hydrophobic surface with low costs and high efficiency.…”