Control of Ice Propagation by Using Polyelectrolyte Multilayer Coatings

Ice propagation is of great importance to the accumulation of ice/frost on solid surfaces. However, no investigation has been reported on the tuning of ice propagation through a simple coating process. Herein, we study the ice propagation behavior on polyelectrolyte multilayer (PEM) surfaces coated with the layer-by-layer (LBL) deposition approach. We discover that ice propagation is strongly dependent on the amount of water in the outermost layer of PEMs, that is, the ice propagation rate increases with the amount of water in the outermost layer. The ice propagation rate can be tuned by up to three orders of magnitude by changing the polyelectrolyte pairs, counterions of the outermost polymer layer, or the salt concentration during the preparation of PEMs. Because the simple, versatile, and inexpensive LBL deposition approach is generally applicable to almost all available surfaces, the PEM coatings can tune ice propagation on a wide range of substrates.