We report on a novel single-step method to develop steel surfaces with permanent highly hydrophilic and anti-corrosive properties, without employing any chemical coating. It is based on the femtosecond (fs) laser processing in a saturated background gas atmosphere. It is particularly shown that the fs laser microstructuring of steel in the presence of ammonia gas gives rise to pseudoperiodic arrays of microcones exhibiting highly hydrophilic properties, which are stable over time. This is in contrast to the conventional fs laser processing of steel in air, which always provides surfaces with progressively increasing hydrophobicity following irradiation. More importantly, the surfaces subjected to fs laser treatment in ammonia exhibit remarkable anti-corrosion properties, contrary to those processed in air, as well as untreated ones. The combination of two functionalities, namely hydrophilicity and corrosion resistance, together with the facile processing performed directly onto the steel surface, without the need to deposit any coating, opens the way for the laser-based production of high-performance steel components for a variety of applications, including mechanical parts, fluidic components and consumer products.
Keywords: anticorrosion; femtosecond laser processing; steel; wettability.