Durable and Scalable Candle Soot Icephobic Coating with Nucleation and Fracture Mechanism

Ice formation and accretion affect residential and commercial activities. Icephobic coatings decrease the ice adhesion strength (τ_ice) to less than 100 kPa. However, rare icephobic coatings remove the ice under the action of gravity or natural winds. The icephobicity of such coatings depends on materials with low interfacial toughness. We develop durable candle soot icephobic coating with RTV-1 as a low-modulus binding material. Heterogeneous nucleation on 20–40 nm candle soot particles and their fracture mechanism are discussed. The developed coating always shows durable Cassie–Baxter superhydrophobic state with low ice adhesion (18 kPa) and maintains the τ_ice value of about 25 kPa after severe mechanical abrasion, 30 liquid nitrogen/water cycles, 100 frosting/defrosting cycles, 100 icing/deicing cycles, acid/base exposure, under UV light, and exposure to natural freezing rain in Hangzhou. In addition, the proposed technique is time-efficient, inexpensive, and suitable for large-scale applications.