Mechanically tough and superior Joule heating graphene-papers used for deicing and snow-melting of asphalt pavement

Abstract

The inevitable snow accretion over pavement in winter is always troublesome for transportation systems. Many open questions on road icing and snowing remain, and there is significant demand to develop a green, reliable, efficient, and secure approach for ice and snow cleaning. This work fabrication of a mechanically tough, flexible, and highly conductive graphene-paper (GP). This novel material demonstrates a combination of mechanical robustness and high conductivity, making it suitable for self-heating applications. Based on the remarkable Joule heating effect of GPs, which served as efficient heating elements and was embedded into an emulsified asphalt pavement slab (APs) to construct a new type of self-heating system through a separately packaged and uniformly integrated procedure. Owning to the conductivity of the GPs reached up to 5300 S/m, thermal energy could be provided via clean energy (such as solar, wind, and tidal energy), contributing to the goal of carbon neutrality. Furthermore, the APs demonstrates ice melting under the extreme temperature condition of − 30°C without damaging the pavement structure. What’s more, the ability of anti-accretions of snow has resisted the extreme blizzard in unfavorable weather. Such self-heating pavement based on GPs has the advantages of high efficiency, good stability, and outstanding safety for both snow-melting and deicing.