Preparation And Anti-icing Properties Of Nickel Hydroxide Superhydrophobic Coating Through Hydrothermal Method

In recent years, disasters of the transmission line often happen in our country,which affect seriously people’s normal lives and production seriously, meanwhilecause huge economic losses to society. Superhydrophobic materials have attractedextensive concern of the researchers due to its special wettability and its potentialapplications in many fields especially in anti-icing, which give people the hope tosolve the problem of ice disaster. At the same time, nano-structure nickel hydroxidewith special morphology and chemical properties has become a hot research andapplication of nanomaterials, especially has great applications in many alkalinerechargeable batteries. The superhydrophobic nickel hydroxide will have greatprospects for industrial applications. However, up to date, both the fabrication of asuperhydrophobic nickel hydroxide surfaces and the anti-icing properties ofSuperhydrophobic surfaces have been barely reported in the literature. Here wepresent a simple way to achieve the superhydrophobic nickel hydroxide surfaces andstudy its anti-icing performance. The superhydrophobic nickel hydroxide coatingswith flower-like microspheres structure were prepared on glass substrate by using asimple hydrothermal reaction, and its anti-icing properties were studied. The mainresearch contents and the relevant conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1) The flower-like microspheres structure of Ni(OH)2superhydrophobic coatingswere constructed on the glass substrate with NiCl2·6H2O as the raw material andhydrofluoric acid as ligand and ammonia hydroxide solution as the precipitation agentthrough a low temperature hydrothermal reaction and surface modification. The effectof the different F, Ni atomic ratio and the hydrothermal reaction time on themicrostructure and superhydrophobic performance of nickel hydroxide coatings wasdiscussed, obtained the best process parameters. For preparation of the samples,contact angle can be up to about168.45°, rolling angle is less than5°. Finally we useCassie theory to analyse the mechanism of superhydrophobic property.(2) With Ni(OH)2coatings as precursor, the NiO superhydrophobic coatingswere obtained after heat treatment and surface modification. The experimental resultsshow that there are no difference for the micro-structure between nickel oxidecoatings and precursor nickel hydroxide coatings. The contact angle of the nickeloxide superhydrophobic coating is about163.87°. We discussed the effect of the reaction time on the hydrophobic properties, and then applied Cassie theory to analysethe mechanism of superhydrophobic performance.(3) The contrast test on anti-icing was carried out among the preparation ofNi(OH)2superhydrophobic surface, common hydrophobic surface and ordinary glasssurface, we studied anti-icing behavior that the static liquid droplets and dynamicliquid droplets were both placed on above three surfaces respectively. We discuss theeffect of the droplet size and environment temperature on the freezing time, and theeffect of dropping time of the droplet and environment temperature on the quality ofice on the samples surface. The results show that compared with other surfaces,superhydrophobic surfaces have the remarkable effect for delaying and restrainingliquid droplets to freeze.