Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences

The Scientists aim to keep different kinds of equipment from small freezers to huge oil rigs away from damages caused by ice.

The new ice repellant was announced on Friday, and the researchers believe that the new coating could save different types of equipment from ice-related damage, from small items like freezers to large items like oil rigs.

“Researchers had been trying for years to dial down ice adhesion strength with chemistry, making more and more water-repellent surfaces,” said University of Michigan researcher Kevin Golovin, a doctoral student in materials science and engineering. “We’ve discovered a new knob to turn, using physics to change the mechanics of how ice breaks free from a surface.”

In the journal, Golovin and colleagues explain that the ice repellant is a thin, yet rubbery clear spray-on agent that causes ice to slide off quickly from hard surfaces. And it’s that rubbery texture that the researchers believe was most effective as an ice-phobic substance, though rubbery surfaces don’t exactly repel water.

To explain this, Golovin pointed out that if two solid materials like ice and glass stick together, it requires a lot of force to pry both surfaces apart. But if a solid material sticks to a rubbery surface, the chemical phenomenon of interfacial cavitation results in much less force being required to break the ice.

The new coating could also lead to big energy savings in freezers, which today rely on complex and energy-hungry defrosting systems to stay frost-free. An ice-repelling coating could do the same job with zero energy consumption, making household and industrial freezers up to 20 percent more efficient. The coating is detailed in a new paper published in the journal Science Advances.

Made of a blend of common synthetic rubbers, the formula marks a departure from earlier approaches that relied on making surfaces either very water-repellent or very slippery.

“Researchers had been trying for years to dial down ice adhesion strength with chemistry, making more and more water-repellent surfaces,” said Kevin Golovin, a doctoral student in materials science and engineering. “We’ve discovered a new knob to turn, using physics to change the mechanics of how ice breaks free from a surface.”

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