Self-healing and wear resistance stable superhydrophobic composite coating with electrothermal and photothermal effects for anti-icing

Superhydrophobic material has great potential applications in the field of anti-icing due to its special wettability. However, the poor wear resistance of the material has restricted its practical applications. Based on this, a simple two-step spray method was used to prepare a self-healing and robust superhydrophobic coating with excellent photothermal/electrothermal effect for anti-icing using epoxy modified ethylene octene copolymer (POEG) resin as the substrate layer and the fluorinated carbon black as the top coating. Results showed that the obtained composite coating showed multi-level rough structure and possessed excellent superhydrophobicity toward water droplets with different pH. Meanwhile, the composite coating could resist abrasion and kept superhydropbobicity even 250 cycles abrasion test with a water contact angle higher than 150o. When the surface was subjected to the intense abrasion, the rough structure and the superhydrophobic property of the surface were destroyed. However, it could be restored by the abrasion of the rougher surface. In addition, the scratches on the surface could be completely repaired by the heat treatment, indicating the good self-healing performance of the composite coating. Due to the existence of the carbon black particles, the superhydrophobic coating had good photothermal/electrothermal effects, which endowed the surface with excellent anti-icing performance of removing the icing under the conditions of electrothermal and light. This paper provides a simple and convenient way to prepare functional self-healing superhydrophobic coating, and a new idea for the preparation of anti-icing coating.