One-pot fluorine-free superhydrophobic surface towards corrosion resistance and water droplet bouncing

The drawbacks of artificial fabrication methods of superhydrophobic surface including multistep operations, time-consuming and fluorine-containing chemicals employment lead to inefficient preparation, severe environmental pollution, and safety concerns, restricting the large-scale manufacturing and promising applications. Herein, a fluorine-free stearic acid-based one-pot hydrothermal strategy was employed to simultaneously achieve surface roughness and low surface energy, transforming the surface wettability from hydrophilicity to superhydrophobicity. The as-fabricated superhydrophobic 5083 Al alloy surface exhibits excellent water-droplet bouncing, ultralow surface adhesion force, and repeatable self-cleaning ability. The electrochemical impedance spectroscopy results reveal that the impedance modulus value |Z|(0.01 Hz)was remarkably improved, demonstrating a high-efficiency corrosion resistance. We believe that the one-pot fluorine-free hydrothermal-fabricated superhydrophobic surface can be considered as an efficient barrier against corrosive environments, and being beneficial for the functional applications of metallic materials.