Superhydrophobic magnesium hydroxide layer with self-healing behavior and long-term anti-corrosion property via surface modification with insufficiently hydrolyzed silane

The long-term anti-corrosion of superhydrophobic materials is essential to its practical application, as well as the self-healing behavior which can significantly increase the lifetime of the superhydrophobic surfaces in corrosive environment. Magnesium hydroxide, as a non-toxic, eco-friendly, and low-cost material, has been applied to fabricate robust superhydrophobic layer through electrodeposition under the structure direction of xanthan gum in our reported works. In this work, we designed a method of fabricating superhydrophobic magnesium hydroxide layer with self-healing ability through a special silane modification method. 1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluorodecyltriethoxysilane was treated into a hybrid of both hydrolysate and amounts of unhydrolyzed small units. The remained unhydrolyzed units hydrolyzed during the corrosion process, and modified the exposed magnesium hydroxide again. In this way, the lifetime of the superhydrophobic surface is significantly prolonged (624 h). The prepared superhydrophobic magnesium layer also demonstrates excellent water repellency (contact angle, 157.33 ± 4.78°; sliding angle, 3.80 ± 1.05°), self-cleaning property, robustness (adhesion, 5B; linear abrasiveness, 2400 mm), and high inhibition efficiency (99.9991 %). This study put a foot further to the application of low-cost and eco-friendly superhydrophobic materials with long lifetime in the field of metal anti-corrosion.