Research Progress of Superhydrophobic Surfaces for Anti-icing

Abstract

The problem of icing on metal surface seriously affects the development of many fields, such as architecture, aerospace, it can even causes significant security risks and economic losses. Thus, it is urgent to solve the problem of icing and ice accumulation on metal surfaces. The traditional anti-icing and deicing methods are not only expensive, but also inefficient. Therefore, it is urgent to develop a new generation of anti-icing and deicing technology. With the continuous development of bionics, inspired by the "lotus leaf effect", superhydrophobic surfaces, which exhibit large contact angle and low contact angle hysteresis have gradually attracted large numbers of attentions. The burgeoning superhydrophobic surfaces not only display excellent anti-icing and deicing performance, but also exhibit many advantages such as low energy consumption and high efficiency, showing good application prospect. In this paper, the fabrication methods of superhydrophobic surfaces in recent years was introduced, the influencing factors and internal mechanism of superhydrophobic surfaces for anti-icing was discussed, the anti-icing and deicing techniques of intelligent responsive superhydrophobic surfaces was summarized. In addition, the long-term durability and stability of superhydrophobic surfaces for anti-icing under low temperatures, large-scale fabrication and the future development of intelligent responsive superhydrophobic surfaces were prospected.