Novel Ice-Shedding Surfaces
MIE Department Seminar
October 3, 2023
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM America/Chicago
Presenter: Anish Tuteja, PhD, University of Michigan
Location: ERF 1043
Abstract: Ice accretion has a negative impact on critical infrastructure, as well as a range of commercial and residential activities. Icephobic surfaces are defined by an ice adhesion strength tice < 100 kPa. However, the passive removal of ice requires much lower values of tice, such as on airplane wings or power lines (tice < 20 kPa). Such low tice values are scarcely reported, and robust coatings that maintain these low values have not been reported previously. In the first part of the talk, I will discuss how, irrespective of material chemistry, by tailoring the crosslink density of different elastomeric coatings, and by enabling interfacial slippage, it is possible to systematically design coatings with extremely low ice-adhesion (tice < 0.2 kPa). By utilizing these mechanisms, we fabricate extremely durable coatings that maintain tice < 10 kPa after severe mechanical abrasion, acid/base exposure, 100 icing/de-icing cycles, thermal cycling, accelerated corrosion, and exposure to Michigan wintery conditions over several months.
In the second portion of the talk, I will discuss how the force required to remove ice from a surface is typically considered to scale with the iced area. This imparts a scalability limit to the use of icephobic coatings for structures with large surface areas, such as power lines or ship hulls. I will then describe a class of materials that exhibit a low interfacial toughness with ice, resulting in systems for which the forces required to remove large areas of ice (few cm2 or greater) are both low and independent of the iced area. Coatings made of such materials allow ice to be shed readily from large areas (~1m2) merely by self-weight. Finally, I will discuss our efforts on the development of standardized, high-throughput, quantitative and reproducible assays for ice nucleation, propagation, and adhesion.
Speaker Bio: Anish Tuteja is a professor of materials science and engineering, chemical engineering, and macromolecular science and engineering at the University of Michigan. He received his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering (2001) from Panjab University. Tuteja received his Ph.D. (2006) from the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at Michigan State University, working with Prof. Michael E. Mackay. Following his Ph.D., Tuteja started his postdoctoral work on developing superoleophobic surfaces in the labs of Prof. Robert E. Cohen (chemical engineering) and Prof. Gareth H. McKinley (mechanical engineering) at MIT. He joined the faculty at the University of Michigan in 2009. Tuteja’s work has been recognized by several awards including the NSF Career Award and the Air Force Young Investigator award. His work has also led to more than 20 patents and patent disclosures. Multiple startup companies have been launched to commercialize the research discoveries from his group. His work on developing omniphobic surfaces was named as one of the “Top five new discoveries that will change the world”, while the work on oil-water separation was named as one of the “breakthroughs of the year”. His work has also been highlighted by Bloomberg TV, National Public Radio, ABC News, CBC News, Science Podcast, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and thousands of other news outlets, magazines and newspapers.
Date posted
Sep 25, 2023
Date updated
Sep 25, 2023