Anti‐/Deicing Membranes with Damage Detection and Fast Healing

Abstract

Flexible membrane with good anti‐wettability under giant deformation and fast healing will largely extend its adaptability and life span in anti‐/deicing application. A flexible membrane with significant dynamic water repellency and photo‐/electro‐responsive healing capability is reported, fabricated by combining the covalent grafting of fluorosilane to carbon black (F‐CB) with the optimized ablation difference between thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) matrix and F‐CB. A rolling angle of below 5° is remained after either being stretching to 1000% strain or 2000 cycles of tensile tests at 400% strain. More importantly, multi‐scale cracks on the membrane can be diagnosed and repaired in real‐time; the healing efficiency reaches above 99% within 90 s even if completely fractured under the effect of both solar irradiation of 0.1 W cm−2 and applied voltage of 20 V; and all‐weather anti‐/deicing has the performance of an icing delay time of 323 s and an ice adhesion strength of <40 kPa, a sharp contrast to the 18 s and 1090 kPa, respectively, for bare metal surface. This work endows anti‐icing membrane with the ability of damage detection and cyclic healing, highly demanded in outdoor anti‐/deicing application that involve inevitable mechanical damages.

Water-Borne Photo-Thermal Superhydrophobic Coating for Anti-Icing, Self-Cleaning and Oil–Water Separation

“…The development of self-cleaning and anti-icing technology has aroused widespread attention in the field of aerospace [1][2][3][4][5] in power transmission cables for the reason that ice accretion can result in the mechanical failure of aircraft with large area paralysis of the power transmission system [6]. Superhydrophobic surfaces with a contact angle (CA water ) and rolling angle (RA water ) of water above 150 • and below 10 • , respectively, have an extremely low contact area at the interface adhesion point between solid and liquid and exhibit impressive effects in self-cleaning and anti-/de-icing [7][8][9][10]. In addition, superhydrophobic surfaces with photo-thermal effects would further delay icing time and reduce the de-icing force compared with a mono-superhydrophobic surface [11].…”