A facile superhydrophobic surface for mitigating ice accretion

Ice and snow accretion on power lines is a severe problem for power network and it can cause insulator flashover, wire breakage and tower falling down. Superhydrophobic surfaces have a water contact angle larger than 150deg. These surfaces are water repellent and water drops can not stay on the surface stably, which can mitigate ice accretion on the surface. A superhydrophobic aluminum surface with micronanoscale hierarchical structures was constructed by a facile chemical-etching method in the paper. The water contact angle always retained higher than 150deg on the hydrophobic aluminum surface and slightly changed even though the climatic temperature varied from -10degC to 17.5degC. Only local area was covered by ice when the superhydrophobic aluminum surface was sprayed for 5 min at -6degC. The ice layer would increased along the partial icing point and no new area was covered even though it was sprayed for 20 min. The superhydrophobic aluminum conductor had the same anti-icing result. All show the resultant superhydrophobic aluminum surface can mitigate ice accretion.