Well-tailored construction of icephobic surfaces with
mechanical
robustness and investigation of the structure–property relationships
at the molecular level are highly desirable. Herein, a series of norbornene-based
fluorinated polyolefin copolymers (FPOR-x) with varying
norbornenyl dodecafluoroheptyl ester (NDFHE) molar fractions (0–100
mol %) were well-designed and fabricated via living ring-opening metathesis
polymerization (ROMP) employing NDFHE and norbornenyl pentafluorophenyl
ester (NPFPE) as the soft and hard segments, respectively. The mechanical
and icephobic properties of the fluorinated copolymers can be regulated
by adjusting the soft NDFHE contents. As a result, the well-designed
norbornene-based copolymers exhibited a wide range of tunable mechanical
properties, including tensile strength ranging from 0.2 to 26.4 MPa,
elastic modulus ranging from 0.6 to 593.7 MPa, and breaking elongations
ranging from 5718.7% to 3.7%, correlating with the proportion of soft
NDFHE content. Furthermore, the synergistic interplay between soft
and hard segments, particularly the hardness in the majority and softness
in the minority or vice versa, could achieve a significant difference
in the local modulus and enhance the propagations of cracks within
the three-phase regions (soft regions/hard regions/ice), ultimately
leading to a significant reduction in ice shear strength. Notably,
FPOR-25% with a tensile strength of 12.0 MPa and an elastic modulus
of 227.5 MPa exhibited a remarkably low ice shear strength of 57.7
kPa. This study not only highlights the relationship between the polymer
molecular structure and surface icephobic properties but also breaks
the limitations of icephobic surfaces with a low modulus.