Rapid fabrication of superhydrophobic high-silicon aluminum alloy surfaces with corrosion resistance

[Display omitted] •Using a facile way to successfully achieve superhydrophobicity on Al-20%Si alloy surface.•Excellent electrochemical corrosion resistance of different electrolyte solutions.•Outstanding self-cleaning performance. High-silicon aluminum alloy (high-Si Al alloy) usually used as the electronic packaging materials on the radar on ships have a susceptibility to corrosion, reducing the life of radar on ships. How to improve the corrosion-resistance ability of high-Si Al alloy is still a challenge. In this paper, we introduced superhydrophobicity on high-Si Al alloy surface by electrochemical etching to improve the corrosion-resistance. The variation of surface wettability with the etching time was subsequently studied. A better superhydrophobicity with water contact angle of 163° and roll-off angle of 5° was obtained at 12 min etching time. This superhydrophobicity can effectively prevent the corrosive solution to corrode the high-Si Al alloy surface and increase the service life.