Slippery liquid-infused porous surface via thermally induced phase separation for enhanced corrosion protection

Slippery liquid-infused porous surface (SLIPS) is a rising star in corrosion protection owing to its outstanding corrosive medium resistance and self-healing property. The large-area and facile fabrication of SLIPS remains a challenge lying on the way of its practical application. Herein, we develop a novel SLIPS based on a porous polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) substrate fabricated by thermally induced phase separation. A sphere-packing structure can be easily obtained by blade-coating followed by cooling. The SLIPS exhibits an extremely low sliding angle of 5.8 degrees so that it can resist the fouling of even the Chinese ink, ascribing to its slippery dynamic surface with low surface energy. We also evaluated the anti-corrosion performance of the SLIPS and superhydrophobic PVDF coating by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and scanning Kelvin probe technique (SKP), both of which exhibited enhanced corrosion resistance in 3.5 wt% NaCl solution due to the physical oil and air barriers against the corrosive medium penetration. Nevertheless, the SLIPS coatings performed outstanding self-healing properties because of the high fluidity of infused oil to recover the surface damages, and the self-healing process was recorded by the SKP.