Construction of hydrophobic lauric acid film on aluminum alloy and its corrosion resistance mechanism

6061 aluminum alloy is one of the light metal materials, which has the advantages of good elasticity and lightweight. However, aluminum alloy is susceptible to corrosion in industrial applications. Therefore, in this paper, we successfully prepared an organic lauric acid film on the surface of aluminum alloy by electrodeposition. The film was characterized by SEM, EDS, WCA, XPS, EIS, FT-IR, and neutral salt spray test. According to the results of the EIS test, impedance value has increased by two orders of magnitude compared to the substrate, and corrosion current density reached 8.51 x 10(-7) A/cm(2). The salt spray test was conducted for 192 h before the corrosion point appeared, indicating that the film have better anticorrosion ion permeability. Calculated chemical results show that -COOH of lauric acid is the dominant reaction group and the carboxyl group is near the aluminum alloy surface for the reaction equilibrium state, which provide a theoretical basis for the study of the film.