A hydrophobic electroless copper-nickel fabric with dual drive energy conversion for all-weather anti-icing/icephobic and deicing

Ice can lead to inconvenience and disasters in human activities, making it a widely concern for researchers to find solutions to prevent icing. Hydrophobic materials have been developed for passive anti-icing with a long time, but without active deicing effect. Recently, researchers have explored hydrophobic photothermal materials with passive anti-icing and active deicing ability, which are limited on cloudy days and the night. Consequently, developing materials with anti-icing/icephobic and deicing capabilities for all-weather use has emerged as an innovative strategy. This paper develops hydrophobic PDMS/Cu-Ni@PET with photo/electric thermal properties to support all-weather anti-icing/icephobic and deicing, which is synthesized using copper-nickel and hydrophobic polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The PDMS/Cu-Ni@PET exhibits an outstanding anti-icing performance with a delayed icing time of 1224 s at -10 °C, and achieves a surface equilibrium temperature of 68.9 °C under 1 sunlight intensity, enabling the melting of surface ice particles within 614 ± 118 s. When a voltage is applied to both sides of the fabric, the equilibrium temperature can be reached within 60 s, and attained 158 °C at 6 V, enabling the melting of surface ice within 97 s. It provides a novel approach for developing photo/electric thermal superhydrophobic coatings that can maintain all-weather deicing performance.