Anti-Icing or Deicing: Icephobicities of Superhydrophobic Surfaces with Hierarchical Structures.

Superhydrophobic surfaces have gained tremendous attention for icephobic properties, including anti-icing and deicing. The former is about how much a surface can delay the ice formation, whereas the latter is about how easy the surface can let the ice go off after freezing. In this study, superhydrophobic surfaces with different surface roughnesses and wettabilities were tested for both anti-icing and deicing purposes to investigate their correlation in association with the different surface properties.