Chemistry in Pictures: Embedded ice

If you’ve ever had to sit on a plane while it was delayed on the tarmac in the winter, you can appreciate the need for materials that prevent aluminum from icing over. Evgenii Modin studies such “icephobic” surfaces at CIC nanoGUNE, a Basque research institute. For example, Modin and colleagues took structural-grade aluminum, blasted it with an infrared laser to create microscopic roughness on multiple length scales on the material’s surface, and then coated that surface with a hydrophobic fluorinated silane. This SEM shows an ice crystal (blue) embedded into the aluminum surface. To read more about this work, check out the paper in ACS Nano (2017, DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.7b04634).

Submitted by Evgenii Modin

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