Control in Corrosive Behaviour of Stainless Steel (SS304) Surfaces by Enabling it as Superhydrophobic Using One-Dimensional Micro-groove Textured Surfaces

Understanding the socio-economic complications by the corrosion of modern engineering structures, mainly stainless steel, i.e., SS304 can be solved by probing its link with the physio-chemical nature of the solid surfaces and the fluid medium in contact. This research article focuses on one such physio-chemical nature of the solid surfaces, i.e., superhydrophobicity in controlling the corrosive behaviour of the solid surfaces. The superhydrophobic behaviour has been enabled on the surfaces by regular arrangement of one-dimensional microgrooves using photo-lithographic techniques. Because of microgrooves texturing on the surfaces, the difference in wetting has been visualized between the direction parallel and perpendicular to the microgrooves, i.e., as anisotropic wetting behaviour. The wetting view in perpendicular to the microgroove has the static contact angle (θ┴) between 108° and 140°. Also, the static contact angle for the wetting view parallel to the microgroove (θ||) stays between 75° and 109°. The wetting characteristics has been non-dimensionalized as contact diameter anisotropy (ε = D||/D┴, where D|| and D┴ are the contact diameters measured in the direction parallel and perpendicular to microgroove respectively) and contact angle anisotropy (Δθ = θ┴-θ||) while non-dimensionalizing the surface parameters as ξ(= b/w) and ϕ(= d/w), where b-spacing between the microgrooves, w–microgroove width, and d-microgroove depth. The corrosion characteristics has been measured with Potentiodynamic polarization technique in the saline environment. The wetting characteristics of microgroove textured surfaces shows considerable improvement in corrosion control. By correlating the surfaces for underwater performance, the microgroove enabled superhydrophobic surfaces are so effective in combating its corrosive behaviour. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.