Huang Jianan, Peng Zhilong, Zhang Bo, Yao Yin, Chen Shaohua
School of Aerospace Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2024 Aug 21;16(33):44210-44224. doi: 10.1021/acsami.4c06682. Epub 2024 Aug 11.
Anti-icing/deicing coatings with low energy consumption and superior flexibility could better fit application requirements in practical engineering. In this paper, an active-passive-integrated anti-icing/deicing coating based on carbon nanomaterials is prepared, which not only possesses various functions of electrothermal conversion, photothermal conversion, and superhydrophobicity but also shows a large deformability to accommodate curved surfaces. The coating consists of a sandwich-structured bottom part and top layer, the former of which includes a core conductive layer made of densely mixed carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphene and two polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) wrapping layers, while the latter is a polymeric composite filled with TiN and SiO nanoparticles. Experimental studies show that, when the present coating works under an electric field alone, a 90% conversion of electric energy to thermal energy can be realized, only a 2 V voltage is enough to unfreeze the surface at minus 20 degrees within 400 s, and a slightly larger voltage of 2.5 V leads to a significant temperature increase of more than 100 °C within 200 s. Such required voltages are significantly smaller than their counterparts in existing electrothermal-based methods to achieve the same heating effects, which could be further diminished with the auxiliary action of sunlight illumination. A fast and complete deicing/defrosting can be consequently achieved with a small energy input. Furthermore, the water repellency function, electric property, and electrothermal conversion performance of the coating remain almost unchanged after either a large bending deformation or many bending cycles, thus ensuring an outstanding anti-icing/deicing effect on both flat and curved surfaces. All of the results demonstrate apparent advantages of the present coating including high efficiency, low energy consumption, all-weather adaptability, and excellent flexibility, which should be of great practical value for the freeze protection of differently shaped industrial equipment.
具有低能耗和优异柔韧性的防冰/除冰涂层能够更好地满足实际工程中的应用需求。本文制备了一种基于碳纳米材料的主动-被动一体化防冰/除冰涂层，该涂层不仅具有电热转换、光热转换和超疏水等多种功能，还表现出较大的可变形性以适应曲面。涂层由三明治结构的底部和顶层组成，前者包括由密集混合的碳纳米管（CNTs）和石墨烯制成的核心导电层以及两个聚二甲基硅氧烷（PDMS）包裹层，而后者是填充有TiN和SiO纳米颗粒的聚合物复合材料。实验研究表明，当该涂层仅在电场作用下工作时，电能到热能的转换率可达90%，仅需2 V电压就能在400 s内使零下20度的表面解冻，而稍大的2.5 V电压可在200 s内使温度显著升高超过100°C。达到相同加热效果时，这些所需电压明显低于现有基于电热方法的对应电压，在阳光照射的辅助作用下还可进一步降低。因此，只需少量能量输入就能实现快速、完全的除冰/除霜。此外，涂层在经历大的弯曲变形或多次弯曲循环后，其疏水性能、电学性能和电热转换性能几乎保持不变，从而确保在平面和曲面上都具有出色的防冰/除冰效果。所有结果都证明了该涂层具有高效、低能耗、全天候适应性和优异柔韧性等明显优势，对于不同形状工业设备的防冻保护具有重要的实际价值。
