Electron beam evaporated vs. magnetron sputtered nanocolumnar porous stainless steel: Corrosion resistance, wetting behavior and anti-bacterial activity

Stainless steel (SS), widely used because of its outstanding corrosion protection properties, does not possess any particular anti-stain or anti-bacterial activity as required for household and sanitary applications. This work reports the fabrication SS thin films that, keeping a similar resistance than bulk material, presents hydrophobicity activity. These are prepared at ambient temperature by physical vapor deposition (PVD), either electron beam evaporation (EBE) magnetron sputtering (MS), oblique angles (OAD). According to their scanning microcopy atomic force microscopy analysis, microstructure OAD-SS consisted tilted separated nanocolumns defining surface topology characterized high percentage void space, varied with conditions procedure, EBE MS. It has been shown that particularly nanocolumnar MS-OAD preserved even improved compact SS, determined electrochemical analysis. Besides, all depict antibacterial features, remarkable films, have related tip-like termination existence large spaces separating nanocolumns. appears affect negatively bacteria’s deployment onto therefore survival rate. Differences in performance between specificities these two PVD methods film preparation. A relatively abrasion resistance, tests, supports use commodity materials.