Research progress on the design principle and preparation of low ice adhesion surface

Ice accretion on a bare surface causes a serious problem in industries and daily life such as communication, electricity, and transportation. At present, the main de-icing method is active de-icing, which includes mechanical de-icing or electric-thermal de-icing and spraying glycol anti-icing agents. These methods have a high cost of manpower, energy, and environment. In addition, active de-icing is not applicable in many scenarios. To solve this problem, icephobic surfaces are expected to be widely used. Icephobic surfaces can be divided into surfaces that prolong the freezing time and surfaces with low ice adhesion. Anti-icing surfaces, represented by superhydrophobic surfaces, can inhibit a stable formation of ice nucleation from delaying ice formation, which enables the supercooled droplets to rebound from the surface to prevent ice formation. However, under high humidity and high atmospheric pressure, the superhydrophobic surface may lose efficiency due to frosting and other reasons. Compared with anti-icing surfaces, de-icing surfaces are more achievable. Thus, this article mainly explores surfaces with low ice adhesion. Passive de-icing mainly refers to the construction of the ice sparing surface on a bare substrate to reduce the adhesion strength of icing. Compared with active de-icing methods, the passive method has advantages of low energy consumption, low cost, and environmental friendliness. The realization of low ice adhesion is mainly related to low surface energy, interface slippage, and crack initiation. According to the realization mechanism, low ice adhesion surfaces can be divided into low surface energy surfaces, lubricated surfaces, interfacial slippage and low shear modulus surfaces, and crack initiators surfaces. The design principles and mechanism of the de-icing surface are explored and summarized in this article. In addition, to eliminate the doubts about the large variations in the reported ice adhesion strength caused by different measurement methods, the measurement standards of ice adhesion are also analyzed and discussed.