Combining the Pitcher and Lotus Plant: Supericephobic and Superhydrophobic Silicone Films

From power lines and airplane wings to wind turbines, many devices and infrastructure would benefit from icephobicity, the ability for a material to shed ice, and thus avoid costly damages which disrupt critical aspects of daily life. Many existing icephobic materials suffer from durability issues simply due to weathering and contamination, which are often addressed by a related but distinct property: superhydrophobicity. Unfortunately, most superhydrophobic surfaces developed to date are not icephobic. Based on bench-top nanomolding of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) with optimized silicone oil content from crystalized polycarbonate (PC) template, we developed hierarchically structured silicone films (as a new class of slippery lubricant-infused porous surface, SLIPS) that are both superhydrophobic and supericephobic. In doing so, we effectively combine the properties of the lotus and pitcher plant; we explored how the morphology at nano/micrometer scale and the amount of silicone oil in our SLIPS can be tuned to balance wettability and ice shedding to achieve superhydrophobicity and supericephobicity simultaneously, with water contact angle as high as 171.2 ± 1.5° and ice adhesion strength as low as 11.5 ± 2.3 kPa (i.e., superior water repellency and ice shedding capability). While synergistically utilizing the properties of Nepenthes and Nelumbo nucifera, this new fabrication approach for SLIPS promises tremendous application potentials.