Superhydrophobic surface with lotus/petal effect and its improvement on fatigue resistance of heat-resistant steel

Superhydrophobic surfaces have attracted much interest in the research on surface roughness and application of abrasion resistance, corrosion resistance and anti-icing performance. In this work, a superhydrophobic surface has been fabricated by vapor deposition of PFDS (1H, 1H, 2H, 2H-perfluorodecyltriethoxysilane) on surface of sandblasted/HCl-etched heat-resistant steel. The HCl-etched surface had petal effect showing good superhydrophobicity with apparent contact angle of 153 degrees and high-water adhesion. The sandblasted/HCl-etched surface had lotus effect exhibiting excellent superhydrophobic properties with apparent contact angle of 159 degrees and low-water adhesion. The coating on the heat-resistant steel also had outstanding abrasion resistance withstanding 300 cm abrasion distance on sandpaper. The coating remained superhydrophobicity after immersing in the H2SO4 solution with various PH values. Simultaneously, the fatigue life of heat-resistant steel was improved significantly by sandblasted/HCl-etched and coated with PFDS.