As human beings wear coats to fend off the cold, civil equipment like planes, power transmission lines and wind turbines need specially designed coatings to cope with ice accumulation at high altitudes and in cold environments that would cause operational difficulties or disastrous malfunctions. 

Great efforts have been made to develop environmentally-friendly anti-icing or deicing surfaces over the last several decades. However, a high-efficiency, strong and energy-saving surface for both anti-icing and deicing remains a challenge.

Professor Zhang Lei’s team from Tianjin University’s School of Chemical Engineering and Technology reports having designed a sunlight-responsive and robust anti-icing/deicing coating that integrates an amphiphilic PVP-PDMS material with soft surface material and photothermal nanocarbon fiber.

Traditional deicing methods like electric heating deicing, hot air deicing, mechanical deicing and chemical deicing are low efficiency, have a high energy consumption rate and are prone to corroding the equipment itself and causing damage to the environment. The newly developed coating, however, can effectively prevent the formation of ice and absorb sunlight to produce heat. It can also reduce the ice adhesion on the coating surface so that ice can be easily removed by wind and gravity.

“Experiments show that the new coating possesses a superior stability and can withstand acid rain scouring and sand damage, making it a promising ‘equipment guardian’ at high altitudes and in cold environments,” said Yang Jing, one of the project’s researchers.