Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Progress in Organic Coatings journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/porgcoat Decorated fibrous silica epoxy coating exhibiting anti-corrosion properties Aziz Fihri ⁎ , Dana Abdullatif, Hawra'a Bin Saad, Remi Mahfouz, Hameed Al-Baidary, Mohamed Bouhrara ⁎ Oil and Gas Network Integrity Division, Research & Development Center, Saudi Aramco, Dhahran, 31311, Saudi Arabia ARTICLE INFO This article is dedicated to the memory of El Wacham Hada, admirable grandmother and an irreplaceable person. Keywords: Fibroussilica Epoxy coatings Carbon steel Superhydrophobicity Corrosion resistance ABSTRACT In this paper we report a simple approach of preparation of fibrous superhydrophobic silica employing a low cost and scalable methodology. The prepared superhydrophobic fibrous silica was characterized using thermal gravimetric analysis, transmission electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectrophotometry (FTIR) and 13 C solid-state NMR spectroscopy. The findings revealed that the hydrophobic alkyl chains were introduced into silica particles via modification and the fibrous silica particles were modified from a hydrophilic to hy- drophobic nature. TEM analysis revealed that the unique morphology of the fibrous silica remained intact after its modification with alkoxysilane reagents. The particles were spatially stuck on the surface of the epoxy resin coating with the purpose to create a rough surface with random micro/nano structures. The prepared super- hydrophobic surface exhibited robust water-repellent surface, excellent durability and corrosion resistance. It not only introduces a cost-effective process for superhydrophobic modification of epoxy coating, but also pro- vides a promising strategy to protect metals by simultaneously combining the protective functions of both su- perhydrophobic surface and organic protective coating, which could be employed for large-scale industrial fabrication of superhydrophobic epoxy coating onto steel materials. 1. Introduction Nature has developed materials with fascinating properties, in particular, lotus leaves which have an outstanding hydrophobic prop- erties characterized by contact angles greater than 150° and a sliding angle less than 10° [1]. The origins of this phenomenon, called the lotus effect, have been studied early by the botanists Barthlott and Neinhuis [2]. They have established that this particular property is due to the presence of a double scale of roughness, micro- and nanometric, asso- ciated with hydrophobic surface chemistry. Both of these characteristics are, in fact, essential for the design of artificial superhydrophobic sur- faces. Over the last twenty years, considerable attention has been paid to the development of superhydrophobic artificial surfaces [3]. This interest stems from the fact that superhydrophobic surfaces are gen- erally multifunctional [4,5]. Indeed, they show self-cleaning and anti- fouling properties, and provide corrosion protection and reduction in hydrodynamic drag. The potential applications of these surfaces are considered in a wide variety of sectors such as automotive, aerospace, building, marine, photovoltaic panels, textiles, etc. Various methods have been adopted to design and produce such surfaces such as plasma deposition [6], sol-gel method [7], layer-by-layer assembly [8], laser etching [9], chemical vapor deposition [10], electrochemical deposition and others [11–13]. All these modern methodologies are successfully used for tailoring surface topography and improving the hydrophobicity by coating a designed rough surface with a thin low surface free energy monolayer. However, the majority of these pro- cesses associated with many challenges as they involve special accou- terments, costly and toxic reagents, complicated and time-consuming experimental procedures which make them unpractical for large scale- up production. Nonetheless, one of the most effective ways to inhibit the corrosion of metallic materials is using organic coatings. The dif- fusion of water through the anticorrosive organic coating is the major contributor to losing adhesion between the substrate and the organic coating leading to its rapid degradation [14]. Therefore, many re- searches have been devoted to designing superhydrophobic polymeric coatings owing to the fact that the superhydrophobic surface and bar- rier properties tend to cooperatively improve the corrosion resistance of the polymeric coatings [15]. Recently, considerable effort has been dedicated to designing multifunctional superhydrophobic surfaces based on oxide materials such as zinc oxide [16], titanium oxide [17] copper oxide [18] fluorographene [19] and Fe 3 O 4 -filled carbon nano- fibers [20]. Different polymers are used as matrices to design super- hydrophobic coatings such as epoxy [19,21], polystyrene [22], poly- urethane [23] and polydimethylsiloxane [24]. However, minor https://doi.org/10.1016/j.porgcoat.2018.09.025 Received 28 August 2018; Received in revised form 17 September 2018; Accepted 24 September 2018 ⁎ Corresponding authors. E-mail addresses: Aziz.fihri@aramco.com (A. Fihri), Mohamed.bouhrara@aramco.com (M. Bouhrara). Progress in Organic Coatings 127 (2019) 110–116 0300-9440/ © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. T