Antifouling and anticorrosion performance of zinc or aluminum modified antifouling coatings

Abstract

To cope simultaneously with marine biological pollution and seawater corrosion, in this study, zinc acrylate resin was used as the base material to prepare an antifouling coating, and either zinc powder or aluminum paste was added to modify it. The addition of zinc powder or aluminum paste is 3%, 6% and 9% of resin content in the antifouling coating. A series of tests on the antifouling coating and modified coatings were carried out, including a contact angle test, laser confocal observation, marine hanging test, and salt spray test. The experiment results showed that the salt spray test time of the antifouling coating is only 240 h, while there was almost no corrosion appeared on the modified coatings with 6% and 9% zinc powder content after 408 hours of salt spray test. The initial electrochemical impedance values of the two modified coatings are 6.39×107 Ω·cm2 and 2.18×107 Ω·cm2, respectively, both of which were greatly improved compared with the initial electrochemical impedance value of 1.41×104 Ω·cm2 of the antifouling coating. After immersion in seawater for 50 days, there were no cracks on the surface of the two modified coatings, and their contact angles were 96° and 94°, respectively. After 120 days of the marine hanging test, there was no biofouling on the film surface of any coating.