The Effect of Phosphorylcholine Coatings on Ice Growing and Melting

Abstract The creation of novel approaches to reduce the icing of devices is of economic, technical, and ecological interest. Passive deicing approaches based on thin polymer layers show high potential. (Super)hydrophilic films, characterized by high swelling and surface energy, exhibit a self‐lubricating interfacial layer that can influence ice adhesion. For this purpose, a polymer layer consisting of zwitterionic 2‐methacryloyloxyethyl phosphorylcholine (MPC) and glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) is presented and investigated with respect to its icing behavior. The dependence of the swelling behavior of these layers on temperature and a stabilization of the swelling even at low temperatures is shown and can be directly influenced by the grafting conditions, which have a significant impact on the resulting ice thickness and deicing performance. In addition to the formation of a thinner ice layer, the polymer coatings grafted for 16 h are characterized by excellent deicing performance, resulting in consistently very low ice layer thicknesses in repeated icing–deicing cycles compared to the investigated reference SiO₂. Due to these properties, the developed film has high application potential as a coating for heat exchangers, as it enables a reduction of the time between defrosting cycles and the distance between the plates, resulting in energy and material savings.