Scalable fabrication of superhydrophobic armor microstructure arrays with enhanced tribocorrosion performance via maskless electrochemical machining

The superhydrophobic microstructure array has great application prospects, including anti-icing, drag reduction, heat transfer, and droplet manipulation. However, there is a lack of efficient and scalable fabrication methods for superhydrophobic microstructure arrays, and the tribocorrosion performance of the array surface has received little attention, which limits the practical application of superhydrophobic microstructure arrays in complex environments. This work provides a novel method to fabricate armor microstructure arrays with square micro pits on the surface of 304 stainless steel based on maskless electrochemical machining technology. The obtained armor microstructure arrays without chemical modification exhibited excellent superhydrophobicity with the contact angle of 153.5° ± 0.9°. Experiments show that the morphology and wettability of the microstructure arrays could be well controlled by adjusting the voltage parameters. The fabricated superhydrophobic surface with armor microstructure arrays not only effectively reduced the corrosion tendency of the substrate, but also showed excellent tribological properties even under different corrosion potentials. It is believed that maskless electrochemical machining technology will enable scalable fabrication of superhydrophobic microstructure arrays.