Fast Fabrication of Superhydrophobic Surfaces on Aluminum by the Comibined Method of Chemical and Electrochemical Corrosion

This paper presents a quick method for creating hierarchical micro/nano-structure on aluminum to achieve water-repellent surface. The method includes two steps i.e. chemical etching and electrochemical corrosion. SEM results show that the micro-structure can be easily obtained by means of chemical etching and nano-structure can be attained using electrochemical corrosion. And the micro/nano-sructure surface can be fabricated within 20 min by the two-step method. Compared to one-step electrochemical oxidization, this method make the processing-time 1-2 order shorter and current density 1 order smaller. Meantime, it is unaffected by the aluminum crystalline with respect to chemical etching. The two-step method is hopeful to be used in industry and expected to other metals for preparing super-hydrophobic surfaces.