Polymer icephobic surface by graphite coating and chemical grafting with diazonium salts

The development of techniques and methods to acquire icephobic surfaces is increasingly important, especially for polymers that are being employed in many fields of common life every day. In this work, we propose an alternative method for the preparation of easily applicable coating that can be used on a variety of polymers that enter in a wide range of applications. This approach is based on incorporating graphite spheres, vapor annealed with the polymer using the corresponding polymer's solvent, and subsequent grafting it with diazonium salt and grafting to the hydrophobic fluoro-containing chemical moieties. The morphology and surface chemistry of samples was characterized by different techniques. Mechanical tests on coating showed good adhesion on the polymer. The main advantage of this approach is that it is easy to apply, reliable, inexpensive, durable, and showed a significant change in wettability behavior and its icephobicity. The coating showed very low wettability with a water contact angle of 167 degrees, with self-cleaning properties and a low sliding angle. The coating also results in significantly prolonging the time of the freezing of water drop, and considerably less ice adhesion on the surface compared to non-coated samples, which was shown by the results from different icephobicity tests.

Automated summary

The method combines graphite spheres with polymers to prepare a easily applicable coating with excellent icephobic properties and durability. The coating shows very low wettability and significantly reduced ice adhesion, with a considerable prolonging effect on water drop freezing time.