Material Strategies for Ice Accretion Prevention and Easy Removal

Abstract

Ice accretion in winter has been a serious threat to the security of people's lives and facility operations. To prevent ice accretion, various materials have been developed in the past decade. In this Review, three kinds of ice accretion prevention methods, namely, active deicing, passive anti-icing, and the combination of both were summarized. By reducing water droplet retention time, decreasing the icing point, and inhibiting ice nucleus formation on the surface or suppressing ice formation through special macro−micro physicochemical structures, etc., passive anti-icing was realized. Endowing the material surfaces with low surface energy feature, impregnated lubricants or peculiar elastic modulus, etc., effectively promoted active deicing performance. Some multifunctional materials, such as photothermal or electric−thermal hydrophobic materials, have both anti-icing and deicing properties, and icing can be prevented perfectly by external energy, which was adaptable to the mutable natural environment. Finally, current challenges and future outlooks were proposed.

A highly transparent and photothermal composite coating for effective anti-/de-icing of glass surfaces

“…11 Photothermal conversion coating is a promising material for anti/de-icing of glass surfaces. [12][13][14] Various photothermal materials, including functional inks from cuttlesh, 15 carbon-based materials, [16][17][18] metal ceramics, 19 CVD-deposited graphene, 20,21 and carbon nanotubes, 14,22,23 have been used in research studies to develop anti/de-icing surfaces. Currently, these photothermal conversion coatings are typically applied in anti/de-icing studies of aircra wings, [24][25][26] large equipment, 27,28 and under other particularly extreme environmental conditions.…”

Electro‐/Photo‐Thermal Promoted Anti‐Icing Materials: A New Strategy Combined with Passive Anti‐Icing and Active De‐Icing

“…[12,32,65,66] By the combination of passive AIM and active de-icing, new rationally designed AIM show efficient (i.e., <5 min), reliable (i.e., for safety) and energy saving (i.e., for cost) properties. Although there are many review papers on passive AIM, [9,14,36,37,67] reviews particularly focusing on electro-/photo-thermal promoted AIM (i.e., a new strategy combined with passive anti-icing and active de-icing) is still lacking.…”

“…The conceptual idea is that for all-weather outdoor anti-icing applications, AIM only need to reach a certain value of ice adhesion strength (i.e., τ ice <100 kPa) instead of achieving lowest ice adhesion strength, and simultaneously by the assistance of external stimulus (i.e., photo-thermal and electro-thermal heating), ice can easily be shed off in a very efficient (i.e., <5 min), reliable (i.e., for safety), and energy saving (i.e., for cost) way (Figure 1). Many reviews have been mainly accomplished on passive AIM, [33][34][35][36][37] while review papers focusing on the anti-icing/de-icing strategy combined with passive anti-icing and active de-icing are urgently needed. In this review paper, we give a brief introduction to passive AIM, and mainly focus on recent advances in the electro-/photo-thermal promoted AIM in terms of anti-icing/de-icing mechanisms, challenges and perspectives.…”

Materials Innovation for Global Water Sustainability

“…Hygroscopic polymeric gels with thermal-driven phase transition behavior have shown potential for high moisture capturing capacity and easy water release . Those materials can also be applied for sustainable agriculture and beyond. , …”