Recent advances in solar-thermal surfaces for anti-icing/anti-frosting/anti-fogging

Abstract

Icing, frosting, and fogging are all natural phenomena in cold climates, which bring a lot of inconvenience and safety problems to our daily life and industry when formed on the infrastructures. Solar-thermal anti-icing, anti-frosting or anti-fogging surfaces have attracted a lot of interest due to their effectiveness and green ecofriendly features in comparison with the conventional mechanical, thermal, and chemical methods. This short review aims at summarizing the recent progress of solar-thermal anti-fogging/anti-icing/anti-frosting surfaces. First of all, both the fundamental of solar-thermal energy conversion and the mechanism of solar-thermal anti-fogging/anti-icing/anti-frosting are introduced. After that, recent advances in solar-thermal anti-fogging surfaces, and superhydrophobic solar-thermal anti-icing/anti-frosting surfaces are summarized according to the categories of photothermal materials. The results of our collaborative research groups in this field are highlighted in this review. In the end, through comparing those reported surfaces, we point out the bottlenecks in the existing researches of this field, and suggest the potential significant research directions in the future.