Jumping frost crystals: Lab works toward electrostatic de-icing

Phys.org  February 24, 2021
Charge separation in frost has been studied in the past, but the effect has never been exploited to remove the frost from its surface. A team of researchers in the US (Virginia Tech, UC Santa Barbara) exploited the spontaneous electrification of ice to reveal a surprising phenomenon of jumping frost dendrites. They observed frost dendrites breaking off from mother dendrites and/or the substrate to jump out-of-plane toward an opposing polar liquid. They developed analytical and numerical models to estimate the attractive force between the frost dendrites and liquid and found it to be in good agreement with the experimental results. The models estimate the extent of charge separation within a growing sheet of frost, which is caused by mismatches in the mobilities of the charge carriers in ice. They are working toward removing large sheets of ice by increasing the amount of charge that comes near the frost…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE

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