Preparation of Stainless Steel Superhydrophobic Surface and Analysis of Hydrophobic Mechanism

By analyzing the application conditions of hydrothermal oxidation equipment, we found that the corrosion resistance of stainless steel is crucial. It is necessary to prepare superhydrophobic surface to improve the corrosion resistance and find a cost-effective and environmentally friendly preparation method. Therefore, this paper proposes a method combining nanosecond laser and post-treatment, which uses nanosecond laser to etch microstructure and reduces the surface energy through diverse post-treatment methods to achieve hydrophobicity. The surface morphology characteristics were studied, the wettability of various post-treatment methods was compared, and the hydrophobic mechanism was analyzed. The results show that the groove width has a significant impact on the surface morphology. Superhydrophobic surface can be obtained immediately after heat treatment and fluorosilane modification, while natural storage requires more than one month. All of the post-treatment can obtain hydrophobicity by reducing the surface energy, but the chemical composition is distinct. The cost-effective composite process of laser and heat treatment plays a guiding role in future research on the preparation of stainless steel superhydrophobic surface and has broad prospects in the future in large-scale production and application.