Hydrophobic coating of aluminum flake particles and application of these particles to produce superhydrophobic surfaces

Superhydrophobic surfaces are the surfaces with self-cleaning behavior due to surface slip condition. This property is applicable to produce drag reducing, anti-corrosive, and anti-fouling surfaces. Superhydrophobic coatings have been vigorously researched through numerous physical and chemical approaches, including lithography, self-assembly, electrospinning, chemical vapor deposition, plasma or chemical etching, and sol−gel techniques, and so forth. The large-scale fabrication of these surfaces is a challenging issue that restricts employment of these surfaces in industrial applications. Hydrophobic coating of micro/nano particles and deposition of the particles on the surface is a solution that facilitates large-scale fabrication of superhydrophobic surfaces. In this study, rotational vapor phase deposition and immersion method are used to fabricate hydrophobic aluminum flakes. Two reaction times are investigated and the results of two coating method and two particle sizes are presented. The results show that vapor phase deposition method is efficient as well as the immersion method while the latter is not cost effective. Stability test of the prepared samples showed that particle sizes are important in the vapor phase coating and the reaction time of 6 h is better than the 12 h.