Robust Anti-Frost Surface Coatings For Aluminum

Ice formations on metal surfaces such as Al (Aluminum) become serious economic and safety problems for airlines and/or refrigeration industries. We discuss a desirable approach to reduce the ice formation on industrially important materials such as Aluminum by engineering the surface to reduce ice formation rate.  We targeted to control the morphology of conductive polymers to develop new hierarchical structures to significantly delay the formation of ice.  Although conductive polymers have been developed as key parts for the construction of molecular electronics, conducting adhesives and artificial nerves, the fine control of the morphology of conductive polymers at nanometer scale remains as a challenge. We have synthesized PPy (Polypyrrole) by varying conditions for synthesis, such as chemical compositions and/or electrochemical deposition conditions with scalability to yield specific controlled morphologies on Al surface.   This approach allows for desirable physical and chemical properties such as superhydrophobicity and anti-corrosive reinforcement to achieve chemically resistive and anti-frost surfaces for industrially important materials.  We will report the hierarchical morphologies of PPy on Al, contact angle measurements, and ice formation and defrost tests, to quantitatively analyze and correlate to the underlying structures to the ice formation rate.