Icing impairs operation of helicopters, aircraft, antenna, wind turbine, power and communication lines, ships, superstructures, canal locks, etc. The coating that prevent icing or facilitate ice removal attracts worldwide research.

We now have breakthrough on anti-icing coating and formulated Miracle® AntiIce® series anti-icing coating products. It is based on very low surface energy, super water repellent, fluorinated silsesquoxane polymer with flexible surfaces in micron scale. Ice cannot bond to Anti-Icing Coating® coated surfaces. Miracle® AntiIce® coated surfaces will keep zero ice adhesion until coatings are severely contaminated or damaged. It is specially suitable for automobile windshield glass and ships for cold areas.   

Low ice adhesion coating has been the worldwide interest of research fields. NASA Lewis has performed icing research for over 6o years, operating the world's largest refrigerated icing tunnel, the Icing Research Tunnel (IRT). The airspeeds up to 160m/s (350 mph), low temperature to -30° C (-20° F), water spray droplets 15-40 micron with content of 0.2-3.4 g/m3 are for ice impact ice tests. During 60 years period numerous requests have been received from organizations ranging from in size from individual inventors to large corporations to test ice-phobic coatings for prevent ice from adhering to aircraft surfaces. Many large corporations, such as DuPont, PPG, Dow Chemicals, and BFGoodrich Aerospace maintain the interest in the development of low ice-adhesion coatings.  
Fluonova, Inc. (previous Elastic Ceramic Coatings, ECC) have involved in low-ice-adhesion coatings and had provided 12 different material samples tested in NASA IRT and had 2 types with lowest ice adhesion records.** By understanding the material structure-ice adhesion relation. Fluonova Inc. has improved its materials on low ice-adhesion coatings. Now we are provide Miracle® AntiIce® coating with 1K coating and 2K aerosol formulations. It is transparent and adhering to glass or 2k fluorinated polyurethane paint, but cannot directly bond to metal surfaces. Miracle® AntiIce® is especially good for automobile windshield application. Performance of ice repellence are excellent on clean glass, 2k fluorinated polyurethane coated metals. However, AntiIce® will not work on any surface that is painted with waterborne paints. Since waterborne paints have to have surfactants as ingredient making resin dispersible in water. Because surfactants change surfaces from hydrophobic to hydrophilic, therefore, bonds ice strongly. 

Ice is the best adhesive. Ice bonds to any surfaces if it is a solid. Ice adhesion is results from surface hydrogen bonds with water molecule. Van der Waals forces is a secondary force. Super-hydrophobic surface made of fluoropolymers reduces ice adhesion due to high percentage (>95%) of water-air contact area and low percentage (<5%) of water-solid contact area which has low surface energy. The material submicron-nanometer structures on low energy surfaces are very important. In the nature, feathers of some birds shown the superstructures with super-hydrophobicity. Birds' feathers have delicate surface structures with super strong mechanical strength and elasticity. Super-hydrophobic surfaces shown low-icing adhesion for low speed wind such as under 50m/sec speed. High speed wind creates high impact on surfaces. Icing under high speed creates impact ice. The occluded air pocket under such water interface is under pressure. In such case, water penetrates into void. When water freezes into ice, the volume expands. If submicron-nanometer structures are rigid, repeated water-icing cycles would remove such rigid structures. The efficiency of low icing adhesion of superhydrophobic man made rigid super hydrophobic surfaces dramatically eliminated with impact icing conditions.

Very important, low ice adhesion coating cannot resist environmental contamination. For example, super hydrophobic surfaces, nature or man made super-hydrophobic surfaces both loss hydrophobicity and changed to hydrophilic by contact with surfactants.. Surfactants permanently destroy super hydrophobicity of Lotus leave, feathers and many man made super-hydrophobic samples. Only fluorinated polymer surfaces are recoverable after totally washed off all surfactants.

** AIAA-97-0303: Tests of the Performance of Coatings for Low Ice Adhesion, D. N. Anderson, NASA Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, OH and A.D. Reich, BFGoodrich R&D Center, Brecksville, OH