Although still on a very small scale in the laboratory, this discovery has important meaning that will benefit human life. For example in the world of aviation, this technique could be a further research on how to prevent the formation of a layer of ice on the surface of aircraft or engines.
A better understanding of how water freezes could lead to a more detailed understanding of how different animal species can survive extreme temperatures. For example, the wood frog, which is able to survive the winter by allowing its body to freeze. (Read also; Abundant Vegetable Harvest in Antarctic Greenhouse, Good Sign for Mars Colonization )
Regarding the research of scientists who managed to find a way to keep water melting at the lowest temperature, published in the journal Nature Communications on November 30, 2021. Scientists were able to keep water melting at a very low temperature, which is minus 44 degrees Celsius or 47.2 degrees Fahrenheit.
There are two keys to this breakthrough invention, namely very small droplets and an extremely soft surface. Scientists started with droplets as small as 150 nanometers in size to as small as 2 nanometers. That size is no bigger than an influenza virus particle. This droplet size helped the researchers uncover the role size plays in the transformation from water to ice.
“We tested all of these size ranges so we could understand under which conditions the ice would form, at what temperature and at what size,” Hadi Ghasemi, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Houston told Live Sains. 2021).
As for the soft material used is octane, the oil that surrounds each droplet in the nanoscale pores of the anodized aluminum oxide membrane. That allows the droplet to take on a more spherical shape with greater pressure. (Read also; How to Survive at the South Pole version of the Citizens Living in Antarctica )
Scientists say these conditions are critical to preventing ice formation at these low temperatures. “And more importantly, we found that if the water droplets are covered with some soft material, the freezing temperature can be suppressed to very low temperatures,” continued Hadi Ghsemi.
Since it is essentially impossible to observe the freezing process at this small scale, the researchers used a measure of electrical conductance, because ice is more conductive than water, and light is emitted in the infrared spectrum to capture the exact moment and temperature when it changes from water to ice.
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