Abstract:In this work a new approach for ice repellent coatings is presented. It was shown that the coatings cause a decrease or increase in the freezing temperature of water depending on the alignment of an external electric field. For this coating the commonly used pyroelectric polymer polyvenylidene fluoride was deposited as a thin film on glass. The samples were dip-coated and subsequently thermally-treated at 140 °C for 1 h. All samples were found to cause a reduction of the icing temperature of water on their surface in comparison to uncoated glass. On several samples an external electric field was applied during this thermal treatment. The field application was found to cause a remarkable reduction of the icing temperature where a maximum lowering of the freezing temperature of 3 K compared to uncoated glass could be achieved. The actual achieved reduction of the icing temperature was observed to depend on the polarity of the field applied during the thermal treatment. Furthermore, a repetition of the thermal treatment under oppositely directed electric fields led to a switchable freezing behavior of water according to the direction of the applied field. With an increasing number of cycles of switching of the icing property a slight training effect towards lower freezing temperatures was observed.

Electrolytic codeposition was employed as a low-cost alternative process to fabricate composite coatings containing Mn 3 O 4 particles in a Co matrix for potential applications in solid oxide fuel cells. The effects of codeposition parameters on the Mn 3 O 4 particle incorporation, cathode current efficiency, and coating uniformity were investigated using a Design of Experiments (DoE) approach. Concentration of Mn 3 O 4 particles in the plating solution, agitation rate, current density, and solution pH were the four factors considered in the fractional factorial 2 (4-1) design. With different combinations of the deposition parameters, the amount of Mn 3 O 4 particles incorporated in the composite coatings ranged from 0 to 12 vol.%. The DoE results indicate that the pH of the plating solution exhibited the greatest importance on both particle incorporation and current efficiency, which were decreased significantly below pH 2. The Mn 3 O 4 concentration in the plating bath showed the second strongest effect on particle incorporation, followed by the agitation rate. While the applied current density did not appear to affect the Mn 3 O 4 particle incorporation, it had a strong influence on coating thickness uniformity.

We report on a new versatile experimental setup for in situ Rutherford backscattering spectrometry at solid-liquid interfaces which enables investigations of electric double layers directly and in a quantitative manner. A liquid cell with a three-electrode arrangement is mounted in front of the beam line, and a thin Si3N4 window (thickness down to 150 nm) separates the vacuum of the detector chamber from the electrolyte in the cell. By minimizing the contribution of the window to the measurement, a large variety of elements at the solid-liquid interface with sensitivities far below one monolayer can be monitored. The attachment of Ba onto the Si3N4 surface as a function of contact time and pH value of the electrolyte solution was chosen as an example system. From our measurement, we can not only follow the evolution of the double layer but also derive limits for the point of zero charge for the Si3N4 surface. Our findings of 5.7≤pHPZC≤6.2 are in good agreement with values found in the literature obtained by other techniques. Despite focusing on a specific system in this work, the presented setup allows for a large variety of in situ investigations at solid-liquid interfaces such as, but not limited to, tracing electrochemical reactions and monitoring segregation, adsorption, and dissolution and corrosion processes.

The ferro-, pyro-and piezoelectric properties of poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-trifluoroethylene) P(VDF-TrFE) have created interest with regard to its application in aqueous and ambient surroundings for sensors, functional coatings, and in the field of life sciences. P(VDF-TrFE) thin films are usually applied via spin-coating, but dip-coating will be advantageous especially for irregularly shaped substrates. The morphology of dip-and spin-coated semi-crystalline thin films is studied as a function of both the film thickness and the annealing temperature. The characterization of the films is carried out by grazing incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering (GIWAXS), X-ray reflectometry (XRR), and infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy (IRRAS). Atomic force microscopy measurements (AFM) are used to examine the resulting topography. It is found that both spin-and dip-coated thin films crystallize in the desired edge-on orientation, but the overall crystallinity after dip-coating is decreased compared to the spin-coated films of comparable thickness and the resulting roughness is increased. The higher roughness is most probably caused by the slower evaporation of the solvents and a secondary crystallization process at the air-polymer interface.