Nanoscale Correlations of Ice Adhesion Strength and Water Contact Angle

Abstract

Surfaces with low ice adhesion represent a promising strategy to achieve passive anti-icing performance. However, as a successful and robust low ice adhesion surface must be tested under realistic conditions at low temperatures and for several types of ice, the initial screening of potential low ice adhesion surfaces requires large resources. A theoretical relation between ice adhesion and water wettability in the form of water contact angle exists, but there is disagreement on whether this relation holds for experiments. In this study, we utilised molecular dynamics simulations to examine the fundamental relations between ice adhesion and water contact angle on an ideal graphene surface. The results show a significant correlation according to the theoretic predictions, indicating that the theoretical relation holds for the ice and water when discarding surface material deformations and other experimental factors. The reproduction of the thermodynamic theory at the nanoscale is important due to the gap between experimental observations and theoretical models. The results in this study represent a step forward towards understanding the fundamental mechanisms of water–solid and ice–solid interactions, and the relationship between them.

Comparative study on the influence of surface characteristics on de-icing evaluation

“…Secondly, the ice adhesion correlated inversely with CAHs on tensile ice adhesion strength, contrary to many studies that suggest a direct relationship using shear ice adhesion methods [33,34]. However, the tensile ice adhesion demonstrated a partial correlation with receding water contact angles over a certain range of surface roughness, with an exception of the sandblasted samples, as shown in supplementary figure S2 (g-i).…”

Understanding the Solid–Ice Interface Mechanism on the Hydrophobic Nano-Pillar Structure Epoxy Surface for Reducing Ice Adhesion

“…The tendency of the results is similar to that obtained by micro-column arrays on silicon wafer [41], which implies a strong connection between micro-and nano-structured surfaces. For the surfaces where micro-and nano-structures are relatively sparse, the volume expansion effect of the freezing process can make the ice inevitably fill in the voids between micro-and nanostructures [42], causing an interlocking effect on the micro-and nano-structure surface and making the de-icing procedure become more demanding on such hydrophobic surfaces [31,43,44], as shown in Figure 9a. Such a theory explains that ice adhesion strength increases on the epoxy resin surface.…”

Anti-gas hydrate surfaces: perspectives, progress and prospects

“…In quantifying hydrate adhesion in most experiments, a micro-mechanical adhesion apparatus was utilized to measure the adhesion force between hydrate particles and surfaces. 163–165 Compared to intrinsic ice adhesion being widely investigated by atomistic modeling and molecular-dynamics simulation in recent years, 166–171 intrinsic hydrate adhesion at the atomistic level is, however, largely unexplored. Nevertheless, understanding ice adhesion could nonetheless shed light on the origin of hydrate adhesion, or at least offer some relevant mechanistic hints and parallel insights.…”