Recently, the research team led by Wang Qiang and Liu Xiaoming from NEU has made significant progress in the field of photothermal superhydrophobic metamaterials. The related achievements contained in the paper titled "Bioinspired Photothermal Superhydrophobic Metamaterial With Structured Micro-Nano Crystal Arrays for Anti-/De-Icing" have been published in the international authoritative academic journal Advanced Materials (Impact Factor: 26.8). NEU is the first author affiliation for this paper. Ren Zhiyu, a doctoral candidate at the School of Metallurgy, NEU, is the first author. Associate Professor Liu Xiaoming and Professor Wang Qiang are the co-corresponding authors.
Icing poses significant risks to buildings and infrastructure, aviation, power lines, and road transportation. Photothermal superhydrophobic materials demonstrate significant potential in anti-icing/de-icing applications. Their photothermal properties enable sustained heat generation under light irradiation, providing stable energy for de-icing; its superhydrophobic properties effectively suppress meltwater spreading and secondary icing, thereby ensuring the efficiency and continuity of the de-icing process. Current methods have significant limitations: while etching techniques can achieve ordered patterns, they are prohibitively expensive for fabricating nanoscale features; disordered micro-nano structures, suffer from poor performance adaptability and suboptimal uniformity.
This study proposes a high-performance photothermal superhydrophobic metamaterial with structured micro-nano crystal arrays for anti-icing/de-icing applications. This structured crystal array features abundant micro-nano surfaces, which can convert deposited metal-insulator-metal (MIM) resonators into heterostructure resonators. These heterogeneous resonators, varying in size, angle, and thickness, provide additional electromagnetic wave response sites and scattering surfaces. They transform discrete absorption sites within a uniform MIM structure into continuous absorption bands, thus achieving a solar spectrum absorption rate of up to 96%. Additionally, by adjusting the deposited materials, the surface morphology of the crystal array can be transformed from smooth to rough, thereby achieving the transition from hydrophobicity to superhydrophobicity. Unlike traditional micro-nano hierarchical structures, structured micro-nano crystal arrays can be integrated with thin-film stack architectures, combining the advantages of film materials, such as adjustable performance, excellent uniformity, superior substrate compatibility, and strong scalability. This approach demonstrates great application potential in micro-nano structure fabrication, broadband electromagnetic wave absorption, wettability control, photothermal conversion, and anti-icing/de-icing.
