Facile Fabrication of Hydrophobic and Elastic Silica Aerogels with Enhanced Anti/De-Icing Performance

Abstract

The anti/de-icing methods are mainly divided into two types: active method and passive method. The passive method generally adopts three ideas: reducing water contact, inhibiting water icing and reducing ice adhesion. Silica aerogels, which have adjustable surface wettability, thermal conductivity and porosity, would be designed to satisfy the requirement for passive anti/de-icing methods. In this work, the organic–inorganic hybrid aerogels based on organosilicon were facilely prepared in a sol–gel procedure, which showed hydrophobic and elastic properties. It could be seen that the thermal insulation effect originating from aerogel-like porous network endowed the efficient anti-icing property. Moreover, the lowest ice adhesion strengths of the above silica aerogels and the related oil-based lubricant-filled aerogels were 7.1[Formula: see text]kPa and 5[Formula: see text]kPa, respectively, which belonged to the icephobic surface. Besides, the ice adhesion strength only increased to 15.6[Formula: see text]kPa after 30 icing–deicing cycles, showing that hydrophobic and elastic silica aerogels had efficient deicing durability.