Fabrication Of Superwetting Surfaces And Research On Properties And Mechanisms For Anti-icing Application

Under low temperature and humid environment,the icing phenomena on the aircraft,transportation equipments,transmission lines and wind power have caused severe damage and brought out great loss of life and property.It was found that superwetting surfaces showed excellent anti-icing performance,for instance,superhydrophobic surface with low surface energy and the special rough structure,has the ability to reduce the ice adhesion due to the droplets or ice can easily slidding off the surface.Therefore,superwetting surfaces is considered to be the most ideal anti-icing surfaces.However,it is not clear that the anti-icing mechanism of superwetting surfaces as well as the droplets condensation and ice nucleation in different superwetting surfaces with different surface chemical composition and rough structures.In this paper,several different superwetting surfaces were fabricated to explore surface freezing process and the properties of ice prevention on superwetting surfaces,make it clear that the difference between superhydrophilic and superhydrophobic surface and the mechanism of anti-icing property on superwetting surfaces.This paper used the modified dendritic polyamide amine(PAMAM)and SiO2 nanoparticles to prepare the superhydrophilic surface and used composite short-carbon-chain fluorinated methacrylate and SiO2 nanoparticles to obtain superhydrophobic surface.The surface wettability,surface morphology and roughness of two superwetting surfaces were analyzed.Superhydrophilic and superhydrophobic surface showed the static contact angle is 9.8 ° and 150.9 ° respectively.It’s could infer that the complex micro-nano structures or the rough structures on the surfaces were beneficial to strengthen instinctive wettability of the surfaces.The paper studied the properties of ice prevention on the superwetting surface,made comparison and analysis on the anti-fogging and anti-icing performance for the superwetting surfaces.The icing delay time and ice adhesion force on the surfaces were measured,and the results showed that the anti-fogging performance of rough surfaces were better than that of smooth surfaces.The differences in the anti-fogging and anti-icing performance between superhydrophilic and superhydrophobic surface were summarized.The results suggested that superwetting surfaces showed better anti-fogging performance compared to the other surfaces.But compared with superhydrophilic surface,superhydrophobic surface had the longer ice delaying time(up to 163 s in-10℃)and showed the lower surface ice adhesion force(about 10 times lower than NIS in-10℃),which showed more excellent anti-icing performance.This article also explored mechanism of ice prevention on the superwetting surfaces.The theory of droplet condensation mechanism and the ice nucleation were analyzed,which explained superhydrophobic surface has best anti-fogging and anti-icing performance because of the surface chemical composition and roughness.The formation mechanism of the ice adhesion force was discussed and the difference of anti-icing mechanism between superhydrophilic and superhydrophobic surface was summarized.Moreover,the spreading characteristics of droplets on the superwetting surfaces were studied using simulation method,which contributed to design excellt anti-icing materials and provided the theory support.