Nano particle modified anti icing silicone rubber coating

When the temperature is lower than 0 ℃, ice accretion on automobile windshields, wind turbine / aircraft blades, wires, communication cables, etc. will affect production and life, and may have more serious consequences over time. Some special protective coatings on these surfaces can effectively reduce the accumulation of ice and snow. Silicone rubber coatings and silicone materials have low surface energy, excellent hydrophobicity and good hydrophobicity migration, which have been widely reported in this field.

Adding nanoparticles to silicone rubber coating can reduce the surface energy and improve the hydrophobicity, which is a common method to prepare anti icing coating. Arianpour et al modified silicone rubber coating with nano pigment dopant, and found that the surface and overall properties of the modified coating were enhanced to a certain extent. Researchers further explored the self-cleaning properties of carbon black, titanium dioxide and ceria nanoparticles in the Al based silicon coating. Due to the addition of dopants and the "nanostructured composite surface" of the coating, the coating has superhydrophobic properties. When the temperature is – 15 ℃, the freezing time of water droplets on the samples coated with CeO2 and TiO2 is 12-13 min, which is significantly longer than that on bare metal (5 s).

Qiu Wei et al. Prepared superhydrophobic coating at room temperature by using hydroxyl terminated polysiloxane (107 silicone rubber) as film-forming resin and adding nano silica particles. The surface morphology and hydrophobicity test results show that the coating surface has a micro nano dual structure similar to lotus leaf, and the static contact angle of water droplets can reach 165 degrees. It is found that the superhydrophobic coating can reduce the growth rate of icing at the initial stage of icing, and has obvious anti icing effect.

Pan et al. Modified PMMA / tetraethoxysilane coating with hydrophobic silica nanoparticles and sprayed on the surface of steel to study its anti icing and anti-corrosion ability. The results showed that no ice film was observed on the coating surface. By potentiodynamic polarization technique, the coating showed corrosion resistance in 3.5% NaCl solution.

Compared with other methods, the spraying method is economical, simple and suitable for different shapes of substrates, which is one of the reasons why nanoparticles are widely used in the field of anti icing. At the same time, the use of nano particles can also improve the corrosion resistance of the coating to a certain extent. However, the compatibility between inorganic nanoparticles and silicone rubber substrate is poor, so how to improve the compatibility, so as to enhance the adhesion performance and service life of the coating is a problem that needs to be paid attention to in the modification.