Toward real-world photothermal anti-icing and deicing coatings: A service performance-structure-environment framework

Photothermal deicing offers a promising route to mitigate surface icing by coupling passive anti-icing with active ice removal under solar irradiation. Yet a persistent mismatch remains between laboratory performance and field operation, largely because most studies are guided by material optimization rather than service requirements. A service performance-structure-environment (PSE) co-design framework is introduced here, in which environmental stresses define performance priorities and structural strategies are selected accordingly. Representative scenarios such as aerospace, wind power, power transmission, and flexible electronics illustrate how application-specific demands shape design choices and expose current limitations. Three bottlenecks stand out, namely the gap between idealized tests and realistic service conditions, the intrinsic trade-offs among competing performance metrics, and the difficulty of translating laboratory-scale coatings into engineering-scale deployment. Progress will depend on standardized coupled testing, a more operational quantitative PSE-guided design framework supported by measurable descriptors and benchmark datasets, multimodal energy management, self-healing functionality, sustainable material selection, and scalable manufacturing. By shifting the focus from isolated performance metrics to scenario-driven co-design, this review provides a framework for advancing photothermal deicing coatings toward practical implementation.