The accumulation of ice in winter has brought many problems in industrial production and everyday life, and how to prevent icing or remove ice rapidly has aroused great attention from researchers in recent years. In this work, we demonstrated a strategy of using a superhydrophobic photothermal and thermal isolation macroporous xerogel (PMX) to delay icing and remove ice efficiently under faint sunlight irradiation. An oriented macroporous xerogel was prepared by an ice templating method, and multi-walled carbon nanotubes acting as the photothermal genesis component under sunlight irradiation were introduced into the xerogel. After fluorination, the PMX presented a robust water repellency and delayed icing. More importantly, numerous macropores in the PMX matrix acted as the thermal barrier that can restrict heat transmission to surroundings at maximum, which guarantees efficient anti-icing and de-icing in low temperature. Water on the PMX surface can never freeze at −30 °C under 0.25 kW/m2 (“0.25 sun”) sunlight irradiation. The outdoor experiment also has confirmed the availability of PMX in a natural winter environment. The PMX integrated with thermogenesis and thermo-isolation functions provides a new route for highly efficient anti-icing and de-icing.
Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is one of the most popular materials to protect infrastructures from the complicated environment due to its chemical stability, nontoxicity, low cost, high durability, and chain flexibility. Herein, a series of organic–inorganic hybrid coatings are prepared by simply grafting loop‐like PDMS on a solid surface. Owning to the low surface energy and high mobility of PDMS chains, the special characteristics, including liquid repellency, anti‐fouling, self‐lubrication, anti‐ and delay‐ice, anti‐paraffin, etc., are presented. To confirm the liquid‐like slippery nature of PDMS surface, the controlled de‐icing and de‐waxing tests on rigid chain surfaces are conducted. The liquid‐like nature of PDMS allows ice or paraffin to have a low adhesion in a slip state, but a fractured state on alkylated and perfluorinated surface with a high adhesion strength. In addition, the flexible PDMS chains grafted on the inorganic silica layer by stable covalent bond endow the surface with excellent durability, including maintaining low ice adhesion during 50 icing‐deicing cycles, resistance to UV irradiation, washing or soaking in organic solvent, etc. This work provides a simple approach for constructing self‐lubricative low surface energy coating to realize de‐ice and de‐wax easily, which may have a broad prospect of application in equipment protection.
Ice accretion always brings much inconvenience in the field of production and life. How to anti-ice or de-ice easily on solid surfaces becomes research focus in the engineering material fields. In this work, a kind of photo-thermal superhydrophobic polyurethane sponge (PSP-SPONGE) was developed by depositing Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticles and polydopamine and simple fluorination treatment to realize anti-icing and de-icing fast under faint sunlight irradiation. Utilizing the thermal insulation of porous PSP-SPONGE, the photo-thermal energy was located at the sunlight irradiation area, which heated PSP-SPONGE surface rapidly under sunlight irradiation in cold surroundings. Water droplets on PSP-SPONGE surface would never freeze under faint 0.3 kW/m 2 ("0.3 sun") sunlight illumination in −30 °C damp surroundings, and the ice melts entirely within 18 min under "1 sun" illumination. Furthermore, PSP-SPONGE has excellent self-cleaning and self-healing properties that can cope with the complex and volatile natural environment to guarantee durable anti-icing and de-icing performances. The simulated outdoor snow removal test also proved that snow on PSP-SPONGE surface could melt under "0.5 sun" sunlight illumination in −30 °C damp surroundings. The PSP-SPONGE fabricated with simple preparation and easy access has wide application prospects in anti-icing and de-icing.
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