Revolutionizing Winter Safety: A New Super Material for Ice-Free Surfaces

Keeping surfaces ice-free is crucial, especially for infrastructure maintenance. Traditional carbon-based materials, despite advancements, face significant issues like environmental sensitivity, poor durability, high energy consumption, and complex manufacturing processes. In this story, researchers introduce a groundbreaking material – a scalable, hybrid metamaterial driven by photothermal and electrothermal properties. This material boasts a nanostructured surface that can delay icing by a whopping 360 seconds at -30°C, setting new records across different temperature ranges.Its unique porous structure enhances light absorption, leading to a delayed icing time of 2500 seconds at -20°C under sunlight alone. When it comes to de-icing, the high conductivity of the graphene film allows rapid de-icing with just 1. 6W of power. After being exposed to outdoor conditions for 720 hours, the metamaterial maintained a contact angle above 150°, proving its durability. The most exciting part? This material can be produced on a large scale, which could significantly improve the economics of the anti-icing and de-icing industry. Imagine ice-free roads, bridges, and wind turbines, all benefiting from this innovative solution.