A stretchable superhydrophobic coating with electrothermal ability for anti-icing application

Abstract Surface icing in the transmission lines may cause serious accidents. Although the superhydrophobic/electrothermal synergistically anti-icing strategy has been introduced, most coatings tended to lose superhydrophobicity under large deformation. In this research, we prepared a kind of stretchable superhydrophobic coating by partially embedding the modified graphene into the Ecoflex elastomer. The excellent resilience of the Ecoflex elastomer together with the outstanding interficial area of graphene results in the maintainment of superhydrophobicity even under 300% strain. Furthermore, this coating has outstanding superhydrophobic and electrothermal property simutaneously due to the introduction of graphene. After applying 20 V voltage, this coating could melt 2 mm thick ice layer within 115 s. Moreover, this superhydrophobic coating demonstrated excellent mechanical and chemical durability, and outstanding thermostability.