Mucus-Inspired Underwater-Enhanced Amphiphilic Liquid-Like Fluorocarbon Composite Coating: Antifouling and Anti-icing...

The adhesion of marine fouling organisms and wave-induced ice accretion poses significant challenges to marine infrastructure, leading to substantial economic losses. Inspired by the Pacific salmon mucus, which exhibits both antibacterial and antifreeze properties, an amphiphilic liquid-like fluorocarbon composite coating (PFDNK) with antifouling/anti-icing cyclability and durability is fabricated by integrating thiol-modified tungsten carbide (K-WC) as cross-linking sites into a polyurethane/polyurea-modified fluorocarbon polymer. Remarkably, PFDNK (underwater coefficient of friction ∼0.1) significantly reduces biofouling adhesion (98.6 ± 6.1% inhibition ratio against Pseudomonas xiamenensis) and ice adhesion strength (∼10.0 ± 0.9 kPa after 20 icing/deicing cycles). The presence of multiple hydrogen bonds within PFDNK effectively enhances its mechanical properties, achieving a tensile stress of 12.9 MPa and an elongation at break of 608%. Furthermore, under solar irradiation, K-WC endows the coating with photothermal properties, enabling exceptional contact-killing efficacy and ice-melting capability. PFDNK demonstrates outstanding frost- and snow-resistant performance under real-world low-temperature conditions, maintains excellent antifouling durability for approximately 240 days in marine environments, presents a promising solution for marine equipment spanning temperate and low-temperature zones, and expands applications in the marine industry.