Flexible Electrothermal Hydrophobic Self-Lubricating Tape for Controllable Anti-icing and De-icing

In winter, the freezing phenomenon threatens the safety of people both in the work and home environments. At present, electrothermal de-icing technology is widely used, but how to improve the portability and anti-icing/de-icing efficiency of electrothermal de-icing technology has attracted extensive attention. Here, we proposed a simple yet universal flexible electrothermal hydrophobic self-lubricating tape (EHT) with a multilayer structure including an electrothermal layer and hydrophobic self-lubricating layer on a polyimide base. The resulting tape surface exhibits a hydrophobic/electrothermal synergistic effect on anti-icing and de-icing performance. Compared with the electrothermal tape (ET) without a hydrophobic self-lubricating layer, the friction coefficient and ice adhesion strength on the EHT surface were reduced by 29% and 57%, respectively. In addition, the hydrophobic self-lubrication effect of EHT can reduce the adhesion of supercooled water droplets on its surface in an extremely harsh environment to allow more de-icing easily under joule heat, and the different electrothermal power demand in diverse surroundings can be controlled by adjustable voltage. More importantly, the uniform EHT material can be prepared in a large area using a traditional blade-coating process that gives a convenient route to anti-icing in the engineering protection field.