Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Understanding the complementary roles of surface energy and surface topology in natural nonwetting surfaces has led to the development of many biomimetic hydrophobic surfaces. Two distinct phenomena explain the nature of the observed hydrophobicity. On one hand, the roughness of such surfaces is significantly increased, which increases the overall surface area of the solid. On the other hand, such “roughness” allows for the formation of metastable air pockets trapped below the liquid, which results in partially suspended liquid on heterogenous air-solid interface. Based on the idea that such hydrophobic (low or non-wettable) surfaces reduce the actual contact area between the solid surface and the electrolyte(corrosion agent), a possible approach to combat corrosion was deducted. The essence of such approach is to achieve stable heterogeneous wetting at the solid-liquid interface. Due to the surface nature of the corrosion phenomenon the heterogeneous wetting and the resulting reduction in contact surface should lead to a significant reduction in the overall corrosion rate. The challenge in forming heterogeneous interfaces on hydrophilic materials lies in designing surface topographies that will lead to stable air/vapor entrapment.The main goal of the proposed research is to develop artificial surface texturing to control corrosion on metallic surfaces. The primary focus will be on developing structured surfaces containing structures on a scale of 0.1 to 100 microns. The suggested surface morphologies will be created by using laser ablation and Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DRIE). The proposed research will attempt to provide in-depth study of the surface texturing phenomena. Thus, the research promises a major advance on prior art in corrosion protection by increasing the understanding and demonstrating the feasibility of adopting surface texturing in wide range of applications.