materialsscienceandengineering:
New surfaces delay ice formation
If you’ve ever waited on an airport runway for your plane to be de-iced, had to remove all your food so the freezer could defrost, or arrived late to work because you had to scrape the sheet of ice off your car windshield, you know that ice can cause major headaches.
“People intuitively know that frost can be bad,” said Amy Betz, a professor in mechanical engineering at Kansas State University. Betz and her colleagues have created a surface that can significantly delay frost formation, even at temperatures of down to 6 degrees Celsius below freezing. The surface is biphilic, meaning it repels water in some areas and attracts it in others. The researchers describe their results in a paper in the journal Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing.
Previous research by other groups has focused mainly on the frost-preventing properties of superhydrophobic (ultra water-repelling) surfaces. In general, the surfaces work by repelling water droplets before they have time to freeze. There is little research, however, on surfaces that mix hydrophobic and hydrophilic areas.
Awesome.
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