Room Temperature Characteristics of Polymer-Based Low Ice Adhesion Surfaces

Abstract

Ice adhesion is mainly dictated by surface properties, and water wettability is frequently correlated with ice adhesion strength. However, these established correlations are limited to high ice adhesion and become invalid when the ice adhesion strength is low. Here we carried out an experimental study to explore the relationships between low ice adhesion strength and room temperature surface properties. A variety of room temperature properties of 22 polymer-based hydrophilic and hydrophobic samples consisting of both low and high ice adhesion surfaces were analysed. The properties investigated include water adhesion force, water wettability, roughness, elastic modulus and hardness. Our results show that low ice adhesion strength does not correlate well with water contact angle and its variants, surface roughness and hardness. Low elastic modulus does not guarantee low ice adhesion, however, surfaces with low ice adhesion always show low elastic modulus. Low ice adhesion (below 60 kPa) of tested surfaces may be determinative of small water adhesion force (from 180 to 270 μN). Therefore, measurement of water adhesion force may provide an effective strategy for screening anti-icing or icephobic surfaces, and surfaces within specific values of water adhesion force will possibly lead to a low ice adhesion.

Highly cross‐linked UV‐cured siloxane copolymer networks as icephobic coatings

“…It was concluded that increased hardness of the coatings was not the cause of rising τ ice . This agreed with the findings of He et al, who reported no correlation between the room temperature hardness of a material and ice adhesion . Surface topography was then examined using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM).…”

Interlaboratory Study of Ice Adhesion Using Different Techniques

“…The VST is very common due to its simple and economical set-up and performance, although the location of the force probe impacts the ice adhesion strength greatly [32], and the stress distribution may not be completely uniform [8,17,18]. The VST is commonly in use by several research groups [7,11,[32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39], and has been attempted as a standard for ice adhesion measurement utilizing only commercially available instruments [14]. When comparing reported ice adhesion strengths, it is also necessary to include the type of ice tested.…”

Anti‐Icing Performance of Superhydrophobic Texture Surfaces Depending on Reference Environments

“…Comparing with the traditional high‐energy consumption de‐icing strategies (i.e., electrothermal de‐icing and vibratory de‐icing), functional materials inspired from natural biological surfaces mightily appeal to many researchers to develop an anti‐icing method without energy consumption by mimicking the plant surface topographies . As well known, the famous Lotus Effect is widely used and induces to construct the hierarchical topography of composite micro‐nanostructures in favor of entrapping more air pockets to repel water and finally realize the aim of preventing ice accumulation . Also, many theoretical and experimental studies have been reported that the trapped air pockets play a thermal insulation role in preventing the freezing of supercooled water, and cause a remarkable reduction in solid/liquid contact area .…”

“…As well known, the famous Lotus Effect is widely used and induces to construct the hierarchical topography of composite micro‐nanostructures in favor of entrapping more air pockets to repel water and finally realize the aim of preventing ice accumulation . Also, many theoretical and experimental studies have been reported that the trapped air pockets play a thermal insulation role in preventing the freezing of supercooled water, and cause a remarkable reduction in solid/liquid contact area . The resultant situation is that triggering ice nucleation gets more difficulty due to the increasing energy barrier, finally showing a certain extent of icing‐delay performance .…”