Improving corrosion performance by surface patterning

In this research, the effect of surface patterning on the corrosion behaviour of a metal (nickel) was investigated. The idea originates from the fact that hydrophobic (low or non wettable) surfaces can decrease the contact area between a corrosive solution and a surface. In the current work, special surface patterns were created on pure nickel sheets. The corrosion behaviour of those surfaces was studied using a dynamic polarization method in 0.5M H2SO4. It was found that there is a trend or dependency between the hole size (D), the hole distance (L), and the corrosion current density (lcorr). The higher the (D/L)2 ratio, the higher the corrosion current density (lcorr). The corrosion potential (Ecorr) of all samples was lower than that of the reference sample in all the tests. SEM images showed that after the first corrosion test some local corroded regions were created on the surfaces but in the samples with the lowest lcorr there was a slight change in the surface