Self-healing solid slippery surface with porous structure and enhanced corrosion resistance

The corrosion issue of metals is common and has significant impact on social development. In recent decades, the novel slippery surface (lubricant infused surface) inspired by Nepenthes pitcher plant has attracted extensive attentions for corrosion protection on account of its superior water repellency. However, most of the construction process for slippery surface was complex and the lubricant was easy to be dissipated in air or liquid environment. In this work, a facile hydrogen bubble dynamic template method (HBTM) was applied to construct porous structure, and the stable phase-change material paraffin was then infused into the porous structure for solid slippery surface. The results showed that the morphology of obtained sample constructed at 3 A.cm(-2) exhibited a homogeneously porous structure. In addition, the slippery surface could be self-healing with thermally assistant after mechanical abrasion. More importantly, the slippery surface showed excellent anti-corrosion performance with a corrosion current density of 1.138 x 10(-7) A cm(-2). It was worth mentioning that the corrosion resistance of the slippery surface was still very good even after immersion in NaCl solution for 3 weeks. The fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and ultraviolet results revealed that the dissolution of paraffin in NaCl solution can be neglected, indicating an excellent stability. Thus, the facile method has great significance for guiding the fabrication of slippery surface and we envision that the solid slippery surface can effectively protect metal materials from corrosion.

Automated summary

This study employed a hydrogen bubble dynamic template method to construct porous structures and infused stable paraffin to create a solid slippery surface, which exhibited a homogeneously porous structure and excellent anti-corrosion performance. The surface also showed good stability in NaCl solution, demonstrating great potential for protecting metal materials from corrosion.