Liquid-infused nanostructured surfaces with extreme anti-ice and anti-frost performance.
Ice-repellent coatings can have significant impact on global energy savings and improving safety in many infrastructures, transportation, and cooling systems. Recent efforts for developing ice-phobic surfaces have been mostly devoted to utilizing lotus-leaf-inspired superhydrophobic surfaces, yet these surfaces fail in high-humidity conditions due to water condensation and frost formation and even lead to increased ice adhesion due to a large surface area. We report a radically different type of ice-repellent material based on slippery, liquid-infused porous surfaces (SLIPS), where a stable, ultrasmooth, low-hysteresis lubricant overlayer is maintained by infusing a water-immiscible liquid into a nanostructured surface chemically functionalized to have a high affinity to the infiltrated liquid and lock it in place. We develop a direct fabrication method of SLIPS on industrially relevant metals, particularly aluminum, one of the most widely used lightweight structural materials. We demonstrate that SLIPS-coated Al surfaces not only suppress ice/frost accretion by effectively removing condensed moisture but also exhibit at least an order of magnitude lower ice adhesion than state-of-the-art materials. On the basis of a theoretical analysis followed by extensive icing/deicing experiments, we discuss special advantages of SLIPS as ice-repellent surfaces: highly reduced sliding droplet sizes resulting from the extremely low contact angle hysteresis. We show that our surfaces remain essentially frost-free in which any conventional materials accumulate ice. These results indicate that SLIPS is a promising candidate for developing robust anti-icing materials for broad applications, such as refrigeration, aviation, roofs, wires, outdoor signs, railings, and wind turbines.
Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
Philseok
P
Kim
Tak-Sing
TS
Wong
Jack
J
Alvarenga
Michael J
MJ
Kreder
Wilmer E
WE
Adorno-Martinez
Joanna
J
Aizenberg
D000535:Aluminum / Q000737:chemistry*; D003460:Crystallization / Q000379:methods*; D017276:Friction; D057927:Hydrophobic and Hydrophilic Interactions; D007053:Ice / Q000032:analysis*; D046911:Macromolecular Substances / Q000737:chemistry; D008422:Materials Testing; D008968:Molecular Conformation; D049329:Nanostructures / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000648:ultrastructure*; D010316:Particle Size; D016062:Porosity; D012996:Solutions / Q000737:chemistry*; D013499:Surface Properties
D007053:Ice; D046911:Macromolecular Substances; D012996:Solutions; D000535:Aluminum