De-iced super-hydrophobic coating´s hydrophobicity and surface micro-structure

Ice accretion on high voltage overhead transmission lines is a serious problem for power system and there´s no satisfactory solution to solve icing problem at present. Ordinary glass insulators can obtain super-hydrophobic and self-cleaning properties by coating super-hydrophobic coating on surfaces. The current research shows that super-hydrophobic coating has potential to fix icing problem, because of its excellent hydrophobicity. In this paper, key point is focused on de-iced super-hydrophobic coating´s hydrophobicity and surface micro-structure for verifying super-hydrophobic coating´s long-term efficacy. Related experiments were completed, and room temperature vulcanized silicone rubber (RTV) coating and blank sample were used as reference samples. The experiments´ results showed that de-iced super-hydrophobic coating´s static contact angle still reached 158° and its surface still maintained its binary micro-nano coarse structure, and there were no signs of damage on its surface. These phenomena indicate that super-hydrophobic coating´s surface micro-structure has outstanding mechanical strength, which can resist the negative impact of de-icing process and keep its outstanding hydrophobicity. Therefore, super-hydrophobic coating has long-term stability under freeze-thaw cycles.