Superhydrophobic Coatings for Aircraft Structures

The aerospace industry commonly uses primers and topcoats throughout the aircraft for many purposes, including corrosion protection.  However, legacy primer/topcoat systems contain hexavalent chromium which is a known carcinogen that poses serious environmental and occupational safety and health risks not only during the painting process, but throughout the life cycle of the components. ES3 has successfully formulated chrome-free superhydrophobic primer and topcoats that performed as well as legacy coatings in typical salt fog testing.  This Phase II effort will focus on optimizing the chrome-free  superhydrophobic coating formulation for both the primer and the topcoat paint system and conduct the testing and validation required for MIL-PRF-23377 and MIL-PRF-85285 on 2024-T3 aluminum.   Subject testing will ensure the superhydrophobic coating performs as well as or better than legacy primer and topcoat systems commonly used on aircraft.  In addition, the de-icing characteristics of the superhydrophobic coating will be evaluated. This effort will develop required technical and demonstration data for the US Air Force.