Extremely Ice-Detached Array of Pine Needle-Inspired Concave-Cone Pillars

Inspired by the features of natural pine needle, a superhydrophobic concave-cone pillar surface (CCPS) is designed by using polymer via soft lithography and printing methods. CCPS has the characterizes of unique flexible performance and concave conical geometry to lower adhesion between liquid/ice–solid interfaces, thus as-frozen ice droplet can be easily detached by tilting or a slight shear flow. Comparing to normal cone pillar surface, CCPS achieves excellent deicing ability, attributed to unique antipinning effect between ice and concave-cone pillars, which is demonstrated by force characterization. This finding offers an insight into design of novel icephobic/anti-icing surfaces and materials that can be extended into some applied realms for solving icing problems, e.g., transmission line, traffic road, aircraft wing, etc.