Precision covalent organic frameworks for surface nucleation control.

Unwanted accumulation of ice and lime scale crystals on surfaces is a long-standing challenge with major economic and sustainability implications. Passive inhibition of icing and scaling by liquid-repellent surfaces are often inadequate, susceptible to surface failure under harsh conditions and unsuitable for long-term/real-life usages. Such surfaces often require a multiplicity of additional features such as optical transparency, robust impact resistance and ability to prevent contamination from low surface energy liquids. Unfortunately, most promising advances have relied on using perfluoro compounds (PFCs) which are bio-persistent and/or highly toxic. Here we show that organic, reticulated mesoporous frameworks, i.e., covalent organic frameworks (COFs), may offer a solution. By exploiting simple and scalable synthesis of defect-free COFs and rational post-synthetic functionalization, we prepared nanocoatings with precision nanoporosity (morphology) that can inhibit nucleation at molecular level without compromising the related contamination prevention and robustness. The results offer a simple strategy to exploit nanoconfinement effect, which remarkably delay nucleation of ice and scale formation on surfaces. Ice nucleation is suppressed down to -28 °C, scale formation is avoided for >2 weeks in super saturated conditions and jets of organic solvents impacting at Weber numbers > 10 5 resisted with surfaces that also offers optical transparency (>92%). This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.