Designing Self-Sustainable Icephobic Layer by Introducing a Lubricating Un-Freezable Water Hydrogel from Sodium Polyacrylate on the Polyolefin Surface

• Main Authors: Junqi Shi, Chongjian Cao, Lu Zhang, Yiwu Quan, Qingjun Wang, Hongfeng Xie
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-04-01
• Series: Polymers
• Subjects: lubricant hydrogel; icephobic; polyacrylate; ice adhesion; self-sustainable
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4360/13/7/1126

A convenient, environment-friendly, and cost-effective method to keep anti-icing for a long time was highly desirable. Slippery lubricant layers were regarded to be effective and promising for anti-icing on different surfaces, but the drought-out of lubricants and the possible detriments to the environment were inevitable. By combining super-high molecular weight sodium polyacrylate (H-PAAS) with polyolefin through a one-pot method, a self-sustainable lubricating layer with extremely low ice adhesion of un-freezable water hydrogel was achieved at subzero conditions. The lubricant hydrogel layer could auto-spread and cover the surface of polyolefin after encountering supercooled water, frost, or ice. Due to the reduction of storage modulus in the interface, the ice adhesion of the specimen surfaces was far below 20 kPa, varying from 5.13 kPa to 18.95 kPa. Furthermore, the surfaces could preserve the fairly low adhesion after icing/de-icing cycles for over 15 times and thus exhibited sustainable durability. More importantly, this method could be introducing to various polymers and is of great promise for practical applications.