Enhancing the mechanical durability of icephobic surfaces by introducing autonomous self-healing function

Abstract

Ice accretion presents a severe risk for human safety. Despite great efforts for developing icephobic surfaces (the surface with an ice adhesion strength below 100 kPa) have been devoted, expanding the lifetime of state-of-the-art icephobic surfaces still remains as a critical unsolved issue. Herein, a novel icephobic material is designed by integrating interpenetrating polymer network (IPN) into autonomous self-healing elastomer, and applied in anti-icing for enhancing mechanical durability. The molecular structure, surface morphology, mechanical properties and durable icephobicity of the material were studied. The creep behaviours of the new icephobic material, which were absent in most relevant studies on self-healing materials, were also investigated in this work. Significantly, the material showed great potentials for anti-icing applications with an ultralow ice adhesion strength of 6.0±0.9 kPa, outperforming many other icephobic surfaces. The material also exhibited extraordinary durability, showing a very low long-term ice adhesion strength of ~12.2 kPa after 50 icing/deicing cycles. Most importantly, the material was able to demonstrate self-healing from mechanical damages in a sufficiently short time, which shed light on the longevity of icephobic surface in practical applications.