Novel and facile fabrication of aluminum-based hydrophobic material with superior photothermal/electrothermal energy conversion for the all-weather anti-icing/deicing of aircraft fuselage

Icing is a natural phenomenon, and it is unavoidable, leading to severe economic issues and endangering life safety, especially icing over the aircraft fuselage. Hence, it is highly desirable to adopt effective method to address it. Wherein, the construction and modification of hydrophobic coating is a promising way. In this study, the aluminum-based photothermal/electrothermal composite hydrophobic coating with excellent performance was fabricated by facile spraying of epoxy resin, graphene, polydimethylsiloxane and gaseous nano-silica over etching Al. This coating displayed excellent hydrophobicity, with a water contact angle of 137.4°, which effectively delayed the freezing time of droplets on the cold platform at −10 °C to 360 s. Notably, the superior electrothermal performance enabled the temperature to reach to ca. 80 °C at the voltage of only 1.8 V, melting the ice particle in 164 s and the ice layer with 3 mm thickness in 360 s under the voltage of 1.5 V. Besides, at 1 sunlight intensity, the photothermal effect realized the surface temperature of ca. 45 °C, and the ice layer with 3 mm thickness was melted within 460 s. The multi-effect deicing coating also exhibited excellent photothermal/electrothermal stability and self-cleaning ability. These findings raise new possibilities for the design and development of metal substrate anti-icing/deicing functional coating material.