A Super-robust Armoured Superhydrophobic Surface with Excellent Anti-icing Ability

It has been proved that the construction of interconnected armour on superhydrophobic surface could significantly enhance the mechanical robustness. Here, a new kind of armour with frame/protrusion hybrid structure was achieved by nanosecond laser technology. Then, this armoured superhydrophobic surface demonstrated excellent durability, which could withstand linear abrasion (~ 3 N press) 800 cycles, water jet test (1.0 MPa pressure) 40 times and 100 °C treatment 18 days. Particularly, the armoured superhydrophobic sample shows outstanding anti-icing ability, which can speed up the supercooled water dropping (no adhesion within 2 h), increase the freezing delay time by ~ 3 times and maintain low adhesion force (less than 35 kPa) after 30 icing/de-icing cycles. Further finite element analysis and theoretical modeling proved that the developed frame/protuberance hybrid structure could effectively enhance the durability. The relatively low surface accuracy in this study can significantly reduce processing cost, which provides a bright future for the practical application of armour superhydrophobic materials.