Slippery Mush-Infused Surfaces with Effective and Durable Anti-Icing and Water Harvesting Performance

Abstract

Although liquid-infused surfaces have proven to be efficacious in many applications, they possess low durability due to lubricant depletion. Aiming to mitigate this problem, the present study introduces a smart multifunctional surface, namely a slippery mush-infused surface, which is highly durable. This surface is infused with a novel composite material resulting from the combination of Polydimethylsiloxane and Carnauba wax that has a mushy pliable texture. The texture of the coating of this surface along with its surface characteristics enables it to significantly reduce ice adhesion strength to 2.1 kPa (from 1400 kPa reported for pristine aluminum sample), delay frost formation to 40 minutes (while frost formation occurs after 1 minute on the pristine aluminum surface). Additionally, since this surface promotes dropwise condensation, it can substantially enhance water harvesting by 99.9% compared to the pristine aluminum surface. Moreover, the durability tests reveal that this surface could retain its characteristics even after 1 m of abrasion with #400 sandpaper, 24 h immersion in water, and 30 minutes spinning at 9000 rpm. Furthermore, 50 cycles of icing/deicing, and 120 h of continuous condensation could not jeopardize surface performance. Besides, this study investigates the utilization of phase-change-material-infused surfaces for icephobicity and water harvesting enhancement for the first time. The slippery mush-infused surface and the phase-change-material-infused surface, both show anti-corrosive abilities, reducing the corrosion current density by four and five orders of magnitude, respectively.