Summary:
UCLA researchers in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering have developed an anti-icing coating that is the first to incorporate a trifold approach by lowering the ice formation temperature, making the surface difficult for ice to stick to and delaying ice crystal growth.
Background:
Undesired icing/frosting on various surfaces causes economic, environmental, and safety challenges. Current methods of anti-icing focus on only one of three stages in the ice forming process: nucleation, growth or adhesion. These methods, individually, lack versatility on which surfaces they be applied to and often result in incomplete prevention of ice buildup. A coating with mechanical stability that can act on multiple ice forming processes is needed to avoid deleterious ice formation across different surface types.
Innovation:
UCLA researchers have developed a class of anti-icing hydrogels that simultaneously tunes heterogenous ice nucleation temperatures to record-low levels, suppresses rate of ice propagation, and has ultra-low ice adhesion strength. The hydrogel coating is easy to manufacture and can be applied to a large range of surfaces including plastic, glass, ceramics and metals. The anti-icing hydrogel has been successfully developed and tested to set a record-low -31ºC (or -23.8 ºF) ice formation temperature, beating the previous record of -28 ºC (-18.4 ºF). In addition, the coating prevented ice formation for 40 minutes longer than the previous record-setting coating at the same temperature (-25 ºC). When ice did form, brushing and blowing away the buildup removed ice formation without any degradation to the hydrogel layer.
Patent:
Multi-functional anti-icing hydrogel materials and methods for controlling ice nucleation, growth and adhesion
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