One-step electrodeposition to fabricate superhydrophobic surfaces on flexible conductive films: Optimization of metallic compounds

Superhydrophobic surfaces were fabricated by a simple one-step electrodeposition technique to deposit three distinct micro/nano hierarchical structures of Ce, Mg, or Cu-based compounds on Ag films on a flexible polymer substrate. Scanning electron microscopy was used to examine the surface morphologies of obtained structures with different deposition. Compared with the bare Ag films, one-step electrodeposition process resulted in superhydrophobicity, including a water contact angle of 159.7° for Ce-modified surfaces, 157.0° for Mg-modified surfaces, and 153.8° for Cu-modified surfaces. Besides, these surfaces showed high thermal stability below 120 ℃, and good flexibility but low electrical conductivity. EDS and XPS results suggest the production of low surface energy materials that formed the superhydrophobic features on the Ag films. Besides, because of the formation of CeO2, Ce-SHS had better superhydrophobicity than Mg-SHS and Cu-SHS. In addition, the potentiodynamic polarization experiments showed that the electrodeposited superhydrophobic surfaces had lower Icorr, higher Ecorr and impedance values in NaCl solution, Na2SO4 solution and Simulated body fluid, and artificial sweat solution compared with the bare silver film, indicating that the electrodeposited protective film has good anti-corrosion properties. These results suggest that the one-step electrodeposition method is a promising strategy to fabricate conducting films with superhydrophobic surfaces for surface protection under various corrosive environments. [Display omitted] •Superhydrophobic surfaces were fabricated on flexible Ag films by one-step electrodeposition.•Three micro/nano structures were prepared with Ce, Mg, or Cu-based compounds.•Morphology evolution has been revealed by regulating the deposition parameters.•Superhydrophobic surfaces show excellent anti-corrosion properties in four media.