Mechanically stable superhydrophobic nanostructured aluminum mesh with reduced water surface friction

Abstract

Superhydrophobic surfaces demonstrate significant characteristics which make them suitable for a wide variety of applications. In this study, we propose a facile, one-step, and cost-effective anodizing scheme using aluminum nitrate/stearic acid mixture solution to create a superhydrophobic surface on an aluminum mesh. The surface outperforms the surface anodized by the widely used oxalic acid solution in terms of superhydrophobicity and water-surface friction behavior. The proposed surface reduced the friction by 11% on average respective to the surface prepared by oxalic acid. The durability of the introduced superhydrophobic surface has also been investigated. The proposed surface retained its high water contact angle and showed higher hydrophobicity relative to the surface anodized by oxalic acid after ten abrasion cycles. This method and surface may be used for numerous applications due to its ease of fabrication, low cost, and excellent performance in energy-loss reduction.

Reversible Superwetting Transition Between Superhydrophilicity and Superhydrophobicity on a Copper Sheet, and Its Corrosion Performance

“…The superwetting surface has attracted considerable research interest due to its important application in self-cleaning, oil/water separation, corrosion resistance, and so on (Forooshani et al, 2017a;Bagheri et al, 2017;Forooshani et al, 2017b;Bagheri et al, 2018;Forooshani et al, 2019;BaratiDarband et al, 2020;Hatte and Pitchumani, 2021). Generally, a surface with water contact angles (WCAs) greater than 150°and slide angles less than 10°is called the superhydrophobic surface (Taghvaei et al, 2021). A rough structure and surface chemical energy are very significant to the composition of the superhydrophobic surface (Siddiqui et al, 2021a).…”