Icephobic Durability of Branched PDMS Slippage Coatings Co-Cross-Linked by Functionalized POSS

Ice accretion poses a severe impact on diverse aspects of human life. Although great efforts have been dedicated to prevent or alleviate ice adhesion to the surface of substrates by developing various icephobic coatings, it is still needed to improve the integrated performance. Herein, we present a novel strategy to prepare poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) slippage coatings by combining a soft architecture-driven branched PDMS with partial short PDMS-functionalized polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS) as a co-cross-linker, in which silicone oil with certain viscosity was added as a lubricant. The chemical structure, surface morphology, and icephobic durability of the prepared coatings were investigated with concerns for the potential anti-icing uses. The PDMS slippage coating shed light on extraordinary icephobic durability with the ice shear strength at approximately 11.2 kPa and maintained low values below 14 kPa even after 50 icing/deicing cycles. Due to the elaborate control of the cross-link density, the side chains of the branched PDMS provided a rich storage space for entrapped silicone oil for the formation of the interfacial slippage. Moreover, the introduction of the functionalized POSS brought about significantly improved mechanical resistance in abrasion and elastic modulus. It is suggested that the branched PDMS slippage coating is a promising candidate in practical anti-icing applications.