Phase change surfaces with porous metallic structures for long-term anti/de-icing application

Deyu Yang; Rui Bao; Adam T Clare; Kwing-So Choi; Xianghui Hou

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2024.01.091

Phase change surfaces with porous metallic structures for long-term anti/de-icing application

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2024 Apr 15:660:136-146. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2024.01.091. Epub 2024 Jan 14.

Authors

Deyu Yang¹, Rui Bao², Adam T Clare³, Kwing-So Choi³, Xianghui Hou⁴

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing, Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Fiber Reinforced Light Composite Materials, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China.
² Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming 650500, China.
³ Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing, Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Fiber Reinforced Light Composite Materials, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China. Electronic address: houxianghui@nwpu.edu.cn.

PMID: 38241862
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2024.01.091

Abstract

Hypothesis: Ice mitigation has received increasing attention due to the severe safety and economic threats of icing hazards to modern industries. Slippery icephobic surface is a potential ice mitigation approach due to its ultra-low ice adhesion strength, great humidity resistance, and effective delay of ice nucleation. However, this approach currently has limited practical applications because of serious liquid depletion in the icing/de-icing process.

Experiments: A new strategy of phase change materials (PCM)-impregnation porous metallic structures (PIPMSs) was proposed to develop phase changeable icephobic surfaces in this study, and aimed to solve the rapid depletion via the phase changeable interfacial interactions.

Findings: Evaluation of surface icephobicity and interfacial analysis proved that the phase changeable surfaces (PIPMSs) worked as an effective and durable icephobic platform by significantly delaying ice nucleation, providing long-term humid tolerance, low ice adhesion strength of as-prepared samples (less than 5 kPa), and signally improved maintaining capacity of impregnated PCMs (less than 10 % depletion) after 50 icing/de-icing cycles. To explore the interfacial responses, phase change models consisting of the unfrozen quasi-liquid layer and solid lubricant layer at the ice/PIPMSs interfaces were established, and the involved icephobic mechanisms of PIPMSs were studied based on the analysis of interfacial interactions.

Keywords: Icephobic; Interfacial interactions; Phase changeable surfaces; Quasi-liquid layer; Solid lubricant.