Self-Deicing Electrolyte Hydrogel Surfaces with Pa-level Ice Adhesion and Durable Antifreezing/Antifrost Performance

• DOI: 10.1021/acsami.0c06912
• Publication Date: 2020-07-08T14:51:03Z
• Authors: Tong Li; Pablo F. Ibáñez-I...; Verner Håkonsen; Jianyang Wu; Ke Xu; Yizhi Zhuo; Sihai Luo; Jianying He; Zhiliang Zhang
• Keywords: 13. Climate action; 02 engineering and technology; 0210 nano-technology; 7. Clean energy; 3. Good health

Despite the remarkable advances in mitigating ice formation and accretion, however, no engineered anti-icing surfaces today can durably prevent frost formation, droplet freezing, and ice accretion in an economical and ecofriendly way. Herein, sustainable and low-cost electrolyte hydrogel (EH) surfaces are developed by infusing salted water into a hydrogel matrix for avoiding icing. The EH surfaces can both prevent ice/frost formation for an extremely long time and reduce ice adhesion strength to ultralow value (Pa-level) at a tunable temperature window down to -48.4 °C. Furthermore, ice can self-remove from the tilted EH surface within 10 s at -10 °C by self-gravity. As demonstrated by both molecular dynamic simulations and experiments, these extreme performances are attributed to the diffusion of ions to the interface between EH and ice. The sustainable anti-icing properties of EH can be maintained by replenishing in real-time with available ion sources, indicating the promising applications in offshore platforms and ships.