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Abstract
Unexpected ice accumulation tends to cause many problems or even disasters in our daily life. Based on the superior electrothermal and photothermal function of the carbon nanotubes, we introduced a superhydrophobic/electrothermal/photothermal synergistically anti-icing strategy. When a voltage of 15 V was applied to the superhydrophobic sample, the surface could rapidly melt the ice layer (~ 3 mm thickness) within 530 s at the environmental temperature of − 25 °C. When the near-infrared light (808 nm) irradiates on the superhydrophobic sample, the ice could be rapidly removed after 460 s. It was found that the superhydrophobicity helps the melted water to roll off immediately, and then solves the re-freeze problem the traditional surfaces facing. Moreover, the ice can be completely melted with 120 s when the superhydrophobic/electrothermal/photothermal synergistically anti-icing strategy was utilized. To improve the mechanical robustness for practical application, both nanoscale carbon nanotubes and microscale carbon powders were utilized to construct hierarchical structure. Then these dual-scale fillers were sprinkled onto the semi-cured elastomer substrate to prepare partially embedded structure. Both hierarchical structure and partially embedded structure were obtained after completely curing the substrate, which imparts excellent abrasion resistance (12.50 kPa, 16.00 m) to the prepared sample. Moreover, self-healable poly(urea–urethane) elastomer was introduced as the substrate. Thus, the cutted superhydrophobic sample can be mended by simply contacting at room temperature.
Highlights
The accumulation of ice tended to create life-threatening hazards in our daily life [1]
The keypoint is to achieve self-healing function and mechanical robustness simultaneously, which was achieved by partially embedding hierarchical structure into a selfhealing substrate (Fig. 1a)
Because of the dual-scale nature of the fillers, the hierarchical structure would be constructed by sparsing the fillers onto the substrate
Summary
The accumulation of ice tended to create life-threatening hazards in our daily life [1]. A typical superhydrophobicity can be found in the lotus leaves in nature. The water droplets exhibit a nearly round shape on the surface of lotus leaves, and roll off under a tiny sliding angle [10]. The further studies reveal that the combination of low surface energy and suitable micro/nano-structure can capture air pockets between the interfaces, which lead to superhydrophobicity. It is found that the air pockets underneath the water droplets or ice could effectively delay freezing time and decrease the adhesion force [11]. The superhydrophobic surface can only delay the formation of the ice. The accumulation of ice in the long-lasting terrible weather is still inevitable, such as the 2008 freezing rain accident in China [12]
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