Bioinspired Surfaces with Superwettability for Anti‐Icing and Ice‐Phobic Application: Concept, Mechanism, and Design

Abstract

Ice accumulation poses a series of severe issues in daily life. Inspired by the nature, superwettability surfaces have attracted great interests from fundamental research to anti-icing and ice-phobic applications. Here, recently published literature about the mechanism of ice prevention is reviewed, with a focus on the anti-icing and ice-phobic mechanisms, encompassing the behavior of condensate microdrops on the surface, wetting, ice nucleation, and freezing. Then, a detailed account of the innovative fabrication and fundamental research of anti-icing materials with special wettability is summarized with a focus on recent progresses including low-surface energy coatings and liquid-infused layered coatings. Finally, special attention is paid to a discussion about advantages and disadvantages of the technologies, as well as factors that affect the anti-icing and ice-phobic efficiency. Outlooks and the challenges for future development of the anti-icing and ice-phobic technology are presented and discussed.

Micro‐/Nanostructured Interface for Liquid Manipulation and Its Applications

“…The detailed mechanisms underlying the above‐mentioned processes have been disclosed by many scientists . For example, the lotus leaves repel water and remain clean even in muddy environments by combination of a hierarchical surface structure that traps air beneath a water droplet and the hydrophobicity of the surface wax .…”

Multifunctional Superwetting Composite Coatings for Long‐Term Anti‐Icing, Air Purification, and Oily Water Separation

“…Superwetting surfaces, with special structure and function, have caused extensive attention to solve many thorny problems, such as self‐cleaning, [ 1,2 ] anti‐fouling, [ 3,4 ] anti‐icing, [ 5–7 ] anti‐corrosion, [ 8,9 ] drag reduction, [ 10,11 ] moisture‐proofing, [ 12 ] water harvesting, [ 13,14 ] and oil–water separation. [ 15–17 ] On the application side, however, the surfaces with nano‐ and/or micro‐meter scale structures were easily damaged by mechanical impact or deformation, resulting in functional failure.…”

“…For example, poor oleophobicity will cause surface contamination and malfunctions when dealing with oil, and surface antifreeze behavior will be directly affected from the synergetic relationship between surface roughness and surface energy. [ 5,22,32,36,37 ] Furthermore, despite the development of robust coating as mentioned above, the synergy of adhesives, application integration of composite coating, and its evaluation mechanism at the specific application environment, such as hard flat surface for anti‐icing, hard, or soft fiberboard for filter or separation, were rarely reported. Our research group has put forward the idea of fluoroethylene vinyl ether (FEVE) and ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) composite resin as adhesive.…”

Fabrication of mechanically resistant superhydrophobic synthetic suede materials

“…[6][7][8][9][10] They can be used in potential applications including oil-water separation, [18][19][20] selfcleaning, [21][22][23] anti-corrosion, [24][25][26] anti-fog 27 and others [28][29][30] due to their water-repellency [11][12][13][14] and self-cleaning properties. [15][16][17] Up to now, quite an army of superhydrophobic surfaces have been prepared on various substrates such as glass, metal, wood, sponges, and textiles. [31][32][33][34] However, little attention has been paid to the construction of superhydrophobic synthetic suede which is a classical exible substrate widely used in the wearable eld.…”