Hydrophobic Coatings for Anti-Icing Applications

The background for this Master’s Thesis is to investigate materials and coatings for use in anti-icing applications. Icing is a problem in many different fields, from aeronautic transport, power lines, and wind turbines to oil platforms. Atmospheric icing occurs when water droplets or snow particles come into contact with the exposed surface, and this may lead to material damage and hence high costs. Each year, numerous of reports are to be found on failures due to ice accumulation. On ships and installations in the oceans (wind mills and oil platforms), icing is, in addition to fouling, a large and challenging problem. As the oil companies are heading north to the Artic areas for oil and gas production, the icing problem will be even more important. This problem has in general been in focus for some years, however, the solutions today to prevent this problem by different techniques and choices of materials and coatings are not necessarily optimal.In our research group, there have been investigations on hybrid aminopropyl silane-based coatings on steel, resulting in a PhD-thesis by Sidsel Hanetho. Here, contact angels up to 80° were found. These materials contain a –NH2 -group, and by replacing this with a more hydrophobic group, the contact angel can be increased. The improvement of these coatings is the topic of this Master’s Thesis. The new coatings will be deposited on silicon by spin coating, dip coating and liquid phase deposition (NTNU CleanRoom) and tested for their contact angel (to ensure the overall goal has been reached), and characterized to structural properties (by AFM, WLI, profilometry, SEM). In addition, a large part the the work will be related to evaluating different sol synthesis parameters for coating performance (FT-IR, NMR and viscosity measurements). In the end, the coatings will be tested in conditions simulating intended use, i.e. below the freezing point of water (snow or freezing rain) where icing of the materials may occur