Durable icephobic coatings exhibiting very low interfacial toughness

The accretion of ice on different surfaces such as power lines, buildings, wind turbines, car windshields, ships and airplanes can have a significant detrimental impact on human society, both in terms of economic impact and safety issues. Thus, over the last few decades, sizable efforts have been put towards the development of passive ice shedding surfaces i.e. surfaces that can shed any accreted ice without the application of external force. Ice shedding is controlled by the ice adhesion strength for small interfacial contact area, and by interfacial toughness at a larger interfacial contact area. Traditionally, the material design parameters that enable low interfacial toughness, and low ice-adhesion strength have been orthogonal to one another. In this study, we describe a novel coating composed of a lubricant-reacted porous structure that simultaneously enables both low ice adhesion strength (=32kPa) and the lowest interfacial toughness (=0.035 J/m²) ever reported. The coating also possesses excellent durability and abrasion resistance which makes it promising for different commercial applications.