Figure
3A illustrates the working mechanism of the TA-SIDI coating. When the temperature falls below the critical temperature (
Tc, ~28 °C for TA-SIDI coating), TA-SIDI exhibits a black appearance, substantially enhancing its visible light absorption capacity. Through the photothermal effect, this enhanced absorption elevates the surface temperature, effectively suppressing surface ice formation. When the TA-SIDI coating rises to the critical temperature due to the spontaneous photothermal effect or the ambient temperature, the coating undergoes a phase transition and becomes white. This color modulation activates the temperature limit state, thereby suppressing further temperature elevation and achieving intelligent management of the coating temperature. The infrared thermal images during the temperature rising process of the sample are shown in Fig.
3B (inset), manifesting that the TA-SIDI has excellent photothermal and temperature limit capabilities. Even at an extremely low solar intensity of 0.05 W/cm
2, the coating temperature rose from −10 to 7.4 °C after 600 s, demonstrating excellent anti-icing performance. When the solar intensity increased to 0.2 W/cm
2, the coating rapidly rose to 28 °C and then switched to the temperature limit state, suppressing further increases in coating temperature. The coating temperature then stabilized at 28.4 °C. Figure
3C shows the photothermal effect of TA-SIDI with different mass ratios of TCMs, ranging from 1%wt to 5%wt. The samples were irradiated for 600 s using a solar simulator, and the average temperature curve of TA-SIDI was recorded. Upon solar irradiation, the TA-SIDI coating with a mass fraction of 5%wt exhibits excellent photothermal conversion ability, elevating its temperature to
Tc. Subsequent gradual thermal equilibration stabilizes the surface temperature at 29.5 °C, demonstrating its intelligent thermal regulation. When the proportion of TCMs in the TA-SIDI decreases from 5% to 1%, the equilibrium temperature of the sample surface drops to 28.6 °C. This indicates that even at extremely low concentrations of TCMs, the TA-SIDI coating can still exhibit a good photothermal heating effect. Figure
3D shows the unique temperature limit ability of TA-SIDI at
T >
Tc. We recorded the temperature of the TA-SIDI coating surface under different solar intensities at ambient temperatures of 35 and 45 °C. Under an environment with a solar intensity of 0.2 W/cm
2 and a temperature of 35 °C, the surface temperature of the TA-SIDI coating reached a maximum of 38.6 °C at 120 s and remained stable at ~38 °C. It is worth noting that under a solar intensity of 0.2 W/cm
2, the coating in an ambient temperature of 45 °C only rose to 50.6 °C to reach equilibrium. Compared with the existing highly efficient photothermal strategies [
29,
31,
32], the temperature has been markedly reduced by approximately 40 °C (Fig. S8). The data indicate that when the environmental temperature exceeds
Tc, even under intense solar intensity of 0.2 W/cm
2, the temperature of the TA-SIDI will only rise slightly, demonstrating excellent temperature limit capability. The photothermal effect under the freezing point is investigated by a low-temperature chamber (Fig.
3E, the temperature variation of TA-SIDI during the cyclic heating–cooling process at 0.20 W/cm
2 solar intensity, as shown in Fig. S9). The samples were exposed to an ambient environment at −10 °C with a relative humidity of 40% ± 5%. The photothermal performance varies notably with the solar intensity. These results indicate that the TA-SIDI coating has the ability to switch between 2 modes of photothermal heating and temperature limit, effectively mitigating the icing problems caused by the deployment of traditional radiative cooling materials in cold weather, while avoiding overheating caused by conventional photothermal coatings in hot weather.