Anti-icing performance of super-wetting surfaces from icing-resistance to ice-phobic aspects: Robust hydrophobic or slippery surfaces

Ice formation and aggregation on external surfaces range from being mildly annoying to potentially life-threatening. Super-wetting surfaces are proved to display robust anti-icing properties. In this work, hydrophobic hybrid coating (HC), robust superhydrophobic fluorous coating (FC), slippery hybrid coating (SHC) and fluorous slippery coating (SFC) are successfully prepared in order to reveal the performance of super-wetting surfaces in anti-icing application from ice-resistance to ice-phobic aspects. Firstly, water crystallization point can be depressed to about -17 degrees C on prepared super-wetting surfaces which is 3 degrees lower than that on hydrophilic glass surface. Water freezing time is delayed to more than 1000 s on slippery surfaces as well, which is 20-fold longer than on glass. Moreover, cyclic ice adhesion strength is significantly decreased to 0.1 N on slippery surfaces (SHC and SFC), which is 3 orders of magnitude lower than that on the other three surfaces. Frosting experiment demonstrates that SHC and SFC can suppress frost formation under low temperature and high humidity environment by effectively removing condensed water droplets, at the same time, frost formation mechanism on different surfaces is also discussed. This analysis provides insight toward designing suitable materials for anti-icing application. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.