Photothermal Active‐Deicing Nanocoatings with Long‐Term Superhydrophobicity Based on In Situ Amorphous Polymers Design

Abstract

The photothermal superhydrophobic coating has garnered considerable attention owing to its captivating and promising deicing applications in an eco-friendly and efficient way. However, designing an active-deicing nanocoating with both mechanical stability, superhydrophobicity, and photothermal performance from molecular structure remains a challenge. Herein, a robust epoxy (EP)&polysiloxane (PS) photothermal superhydrophobic coating (EP&PS-PSC) is constructed by combining hydrophilic EP and hydrophobic PS along with graphene nanosheets via phase separation and swelling treatment strategy. Notably, polar epoxy with lower volume shrinkage can effectively inhibit swelling-type polymers to achieve subsequent micro-/nanostructures construction. Besides, the epoxy can also provide strong interaction interactions between the micro-/nanostructures. While non-polar liquid silicon rubber provides a low surface energy for achieving composite micro-/nanostructures. Furthermore, the as-prepared EP&PS-PSC exhibits exceptional mechanical stability (e.g., 100 cycled sandpaper linear abrasion with 100 g load) with a WCA of 154.9° ± 1.2° and a WSA of 4.8° ± 1.3°, which is beneficial to improve physicochemical stability and deicing performance. The combination of long-term superhydrophobicity and photothermal capability results in a maximum temperature of 59.4 °C being achieved within 400 s under standard sunlight. This work offers a novel approach for the mass production and practical application of the superhydrophobic coating in the active deicing field.