Frost formation and ice accretion present serious issues on a variety of industrial systems. Therefore, the anti-icing coating attracts much attention. Slippery liquid-infused porous surfaces (SLIPS) are one of the ways to suppress frost/ice accretion by removing condensed moisture. However, the durability of SLIPS is a concerning problem due to the migration or evaporation of the infused lubricant.<br/>In this work, we fabricated the robust anti-icing coatings by utilizing the thixotropic lubricant gels. Figure 1a shows the variation of contact angle (CA), sliding angle (SA) and contact angle hysteresis (CAH) on the SLIPS and thixotropic lubricant gels (TLG) with the number of the shower test cycles. The values of SA and CAH increased on the SLIPS after 5 cycles of the shower test, whereas the values of CA, SA, and CAH were almost unchanged on the TLG coated surfaces. As a result, it maintained the wetting property even after 5 cycles of the test. It indicated that TLG is more tolerant than SLIPS because the lubricant loss was suppressed owing to the high stability of TLG. In addition, this durability of water repellent property is expected to contribute to the delay of frost formation (Figure 1b). TLG coating delayed the frost formation (35 min) compared with that of SLIPS (13 min) at –10°C.

Fabrication and evaluation of hydrophobic anti-icing coating with thixotropic lubricant gel

2019 Spring National Meeting

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