Meltwater Evolution during Defrosting on Superhydrophobic Surfaces

Defrosting is essential for removing frost from engineering surfaces, but some fundamental issues are still unclear, especially for defrosting on superhydrophobic surfaces. Here, defrosting experiments on prepared superhydrophobic surfaces were conducted along with the investigation on meltwater evolution characteristics. According to the experiments, the typical meltwater evolution process on superhydrophobic surfaces can be divided into two stages: dewetting by edge curling and dewetting by shrinkage. The edge curling of a meltwater film is a distinct phenomenon and has been first reported in this work. Profiting from the ultralow adhesion of the superhydrophobic surface, edge curling is mainly attributed to two unbalanced forces (one at the interface between the ice slurry layer and pure water layer and the other in the triple phase line area) acting on the layered meltwater film. During the multi-meltwater evolution process, the nonbreaking of chained droplets on superhydrophobic surfaces is also an interesting phenomenon, which is controlled by the interaction between the surface tension and the retentive force because of contact angle hysteresis. An approximate criterion was then developed to explain and determine the status of chained droplets, and experimental data from various surfaces have validated the effectiveness of this criterion. This work may deepen the understanding of defrosting on superhydrophobic surfaces and promote antifrosting/icing applications in engineering.