Facile construction of aluminum-based hydrophobic material with photo/electrothermal conversion for the real-time superior anti-icing/deicing of automotive vehicles

Abstract

In regions with perennially cold climate or during winter, the icing over the automotive vehicles often brings a lot of inconvenience, and sometimes even threatens driving safety. Hence, it is desirable to address it. In this work, the low-cost and scalable construction of a multifunctional and durable hydrophobic Al-based composite coating for the 24 h superior anti-icing/deicing of automotive vehicles was obtained, by using carbon nanotubes, epoxy resin and polydimethylsiloxane. Due to the superior hydrophobicity of the coating, the sample exhibited a contact angle of 149° and excellent delayed icing properties, allowing 10 μL of water droplets to freeze up to 253 s. Under the help of the excellent photothermal-electrothermal synergistic deicing mechanism, 10 μL of ice particles and 3 mm thick ice layer were melted within 102 s and 480 s at only 1.0 sun light intensity, respectively. Similarly, it was also capable of melting ice particles and ice layer at only 1.2 V for 81 s and 364 s, respectively. In addition, the stability and self-cleaning performance of sample were carried out as well, which proved its excellent long-term anti-/de-icing performance and superior self-cleaning performance. Such a hydrophobic coating material with a photothermal-electrothermal synergistic de-icing mechanism opens up new possibilities for all-weather anti-/de-icing of automotive vehicles and pioneers the way for the scale-up production of metal substrate material with superior anti-/de-icing performance.