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Kim P, Wong TS, Alvarenga J, Kreder MJ, Adorno-Martinez WE, Aizenberg J.
ACS Nano. 2012 Aug 28;6(8):6569-77.
Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
Abstract
Ice-repellent coatings can have significant impact on global energy savings and improving safety in many infrastructures, transportation, and cooling systems. Recent efforts for developing ice-phobic surfaces have been mostly devoted to utilizing lotus-leaf-inspired superhydrophobic surfaces, yet these surfaces fail in high-humidity conditions due to water condensation and frost formation and even lead to increased ice adhesion due to a large surface area. We report a radically different type of ice-repellent material based on slippery, liquid-infused porous surfaces (SLIPS), where a stable, ultrasmooth, low-hysteresis lubricant overlayer is maintained by infusing a water-immiscible liquid into a nanostructured surface chemically functionalized to have a high affinity to the infiltrated liquid and lock it in place. We develop a direct fabrication method of SLIPS on industrially relevant metals, particularly aluminum, one of the most widely used lightweight structural materials. We demonstrate that SLIPS-coated Al surfaces not only suppress ice/frost accretion by effectively removing condensed moisture but also exhibit at least an order of magnitude lower ice adhesion than state-of-the-art materials. On the basis of a theoretical analysis followed by extensive icing/deicing experiments, we discuss special advantages of SLIPS as ice-repellent surfaces: highly reduced sliding droplet sizes resulting from the extremely low contact angle hysteresis. We show that our surfaces remain essentially frost-free in which any conventional materials accumulate ice. These results indicate that SLIPS is a promising candidate for developing robust anti-icing materials for broad applications, such as refrigeration, aviation, roofs, wires, outdoor signs, railings, and wind turbines.
Additional Information
“SLIPS Research page at the Aizenberg group, Harvard University” with hyperlink to http://aizenberglab.seas.harvard.edu/index.php?show=research_topic&top=9
“SLIPS Research page at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University” http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewpage/316/
“SLIPS: 2012 R&D 100 winning technology” with hyperlink to http://www.rdmag.com/award-winners/2012/08/giving-slip-all-liquids
1. “Hierarchical or Not? Effect of the Length Scale and Hierarchy of the Surface Roughness on Omniphobicity of Lubricant-Infused Substrates” with hyperlink to http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl4003969
2. “Liquid-infused structured surfaces with exceptional anti-biofouling performance” with hyperlink to http://www.pnas.org/content/109/33/13182
3. “Inhibition of ice nucleation by slippery liquid-infused porous surfaces (SLIPS)” with hyperlink to http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2013/cp/c2cp43586a
4. “Bioinspired self-repairing slippery surfaces with pressure-stable omniphobicity” with hyperlink to http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7365/full/nature10447.html
*Watch SLIPS movies: https://www.youtube.com/user/SlipperySurfaces
