An extreme environment-tolerant anti-icing coating

Undesired ice accumulation on outdoor infrastructures causes serious economic and safety issues, inducing the urgent demand of anti-icing coatings. However, the outdoor equipment inevitably suffers from various extreme environments, resulting in a challenge for anti-icing coatings to maintain surface structures and material properties that directly affect anti-icing performance. Herein, we develop an anti-icing coating that can tolerate a variety of extreme environments, including ultra-low (-196 ?) or high temperature (200 ?), strong acid (pH = 0) or alkali (pH = 14), 168-h ultraviolet (-6-month sunlight) exposure, and 200-cycle sandpaper grinding. The tough coating can remain intact and maintain deicing performance owing to the incorporation of fluorinated amphiphilic copolymers and photo-thermal nanocarbon fibers in PDMS matrix. The coating can significantly decrease ice nucleation temperature (<-26 ?), increase icing delay time (-46-fold delay), and reduce ice adhesion strength (-17.7 kPa), suggesting both excellent anti-icing and energy-saving deicing performance. This coating is highly promising to outdoor anti-icing applications for universal conditions. (C) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

The study developed a coating that can withstand extreme environments and has excellent anti-icing performance. It can lower the ice nucleation temperature, prolong icing delay time, and reduce ice adhesion strength.