Radio-frequency and optically transparent radome de-icing materials: fluorine-doped tin oxide

Ice-elimination systems are very common in radio-frequency (RF) structures like radomes. For a radome application, the de-icing materials must be predominantly transparent to broadband RF radiation and have an adequate heating performance to remove the ice. The current development of high-performance radome de-icing materials is limited with a trade-off between the sheet resistance and RF transmission because one cannot be improved without sacrificing the other. We report for the first time a transparent conductive oxide (TCO) film as a lightweight and high optically transparent radome de-icing material. In this research, we prepared fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) films by horizontal ultrasonic spray pyrolysis (USP) deposition and found that the sheet resistance varied from 9 to 5000 Ω sq^-1 with 0.219 to 90.0% RF transmission. Dassault CST software was used to validate the RF transmission at the X-band (8.2 to 12.4 GHz) region. The FTO films also exhibited sufficient optical transparency with efficient voltage-induced heating performance. With optimized electrical properties and RF transparency, FTO films will be good candidates for next-generation radome de-icing materials.