Abstract
Superhydrophobic coatings have many potential applications in prevention of ice, frost, condensation, and corrosion due to their strong hydrophobicity and self-cleaning function. However, superhydrophobic coatings do not have ideal mechanical stability in engineering applications, and the coatings lose their superhydrophobic properties with wear. We propose an innovative combination of a macroscopic aluminum honeycomb structure with a superhydrophobic coating to prepare a mechanically stable, structured coating by a simple spraying process. The coating showed excellent performance in laboratory ice, frosting, and outdoor ice tests. Compared with common superhydrophobic coatings, the total ice-up time of single droplet was prolonged by 190 s on a platform at −15 °C because of the reduced heat transfer between the macro-honeycomb wall and the droplets. After 300 wear tests, the frosting amount increased by only 0.03 g when the platform was tilted to 60% at −20 °C and 75 ± 5% humidity. In the outdoor ice test, no large area of ice was observed on the surface. Our findings provide a new strategy for industrialization of superhydrophobic coating, and our strategy has potential applications in anti-icing and anti-condensation for electrical equipment, drag reduction, and anti-corrosion.
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