Progress in mechanism design of functional composites for anti-ice/deicing materials

Abstract Icing as a regular natural phenomenon in life poses a serious threat to human production and life, traditional mechanical deicing, chemical deicing, and other methods have the shortcomings of high pollution, high energy consumption, and low efficiency, which limits their applicability and effectiveness of the scene of the above methods. With the expansion of global economic activities in recent years, the solution to the icing problem has become imminent. As a result, researchers have gradually deepened their studies related to anti-icing. Inspired by the lotus leaf effect, hogwash, polar, marine shellfish, and other natural organisms, anti-icing/deicing coatings can be designed functional biomimetic through both surface micro-nano structures and the physicochemical properties of the material. Superhydrophobic design is based on Young’s wetting equations, Wenzel’s wetting equations, and the Cassie-Baxter model of the superhydrophobic behavior of the interface formed by the liquid droplets and the surface, which prevents the droplets from spreading out and penetration to form heat exchange. The physicochemical properties are based on the slow-release behavior of chemical mediators inside the coating with properties such as super-lubrication and anti-freezing, which reduce the residence time and nucleation temperature of droplets on the surface. The coating effectively blocks the occurrence of icing behavior by passive means such as ultra-low interfacial wetting, interfacial slip, and lowering the freezing point of droplets, which has become a hot research direction. Meanwhile, the active anti-icing of photo-thermal, electro-thermal, phase change and other effects with the passive anti-icing to play a synergistic and complementary role for further enhance the anti-icing effect of the coating. To clarity the design mechanism and preparation process of the anti-icing/ice-removing surfaces, the article firstly classifies and introduces the coatings functioned according to the different mechanisms of action, and sums up the biomimetic super-hydrophobic design, the sacrificial type physicochemical characteristic. The article firstly classifies and introduces the functional types of coatings according to different mechanisms of action, and the latest research progress on the mechanism design of anti-icing coatings and their performance modification such as bionic superhydrophobic design, sacrificial physicochemical property design, microregion modulus control design and multifactorial coupling design were summarized. The problems of single-functionality and imbalance of performance of the existing coating mechanism design were analyzed and discussed, the view of the development trend and outlook of the development and application of icephobic coatings were put forward.