This new material could protect vital infrastructure, like power lines, from freezing for up to a week. (Bronwyn Photo/Shutterstock)
In a nutshell
- A new surface design can prevent frost buildup for over 150 hours, a massive leap beyond current anti-frost technologies, which typically fail within 5 hours.
- The surface works by controlling where frost forms, using millimeter-scale textures and a moisture-absorbing graphene oxide layer to keep critical areas completely clear—even in extreme cold and humidity.
- This scalable, scratch-resistant technology could protect vital infrastructure like power lines, heat pumps, and vehicle sensors, potentially saving billions in energy losses and maintenance costs during winter storms.
EVANSTON, Ill. — When frost coats power lines and heat pumps during winter, it can trigger devastating failures. The 2021 Texas power crisis left 4.5 million households without electricity during a deadly winter storm, showing just how destructive ice accumulation can be. But researchers have created something that could change everything: a surface that stays frost-free for an entire week.
A team from Northwestern University, UCLA, and Westlake University has developed a new approach that prevents frost formation for more than 150 hours, roughly seven days. This dramatically outperforms existing methods, which typically fail after just a few hours.
The clever part? Instead of trying to stop frost entirely (which is physically impossible in cold, humid environments), the researchers control exactly where frost forms, keeping vital flat surfaces completely clear. Research published in Science Advances explains how this new technology works.
“Unwanted frost accumulation is a major concern across industrial, residential, and government sectors,” says lead study author Kyoo-Chul Kenneth Park from Northwestern University, in a statement. “For example, the 2021 power crisis in Texas cost $195 billion in damages, resulting directly from frost, ice, and extreme cold conditions for more than 160 hours.”
New Approach to Age-Old Problem
Previous technologies, like extremely water-repellent surfaces or slippery liquid-infused porous surfaces, can delay frost for a bit, but even the best can only hold out for 5 hours at most.
The new design combines two elements: millimeter-sized physical textures and graphene oxide (GO), a material that excellently absorbs moisture. This combo redirects water vapor to specific “sacrificial” areas where frost can form without causing problems while keeping critical areas completely frost-free.
It works somewhat like a lightning rod system on a building. You’re not stopping lightning altogether, but controlling where it strikes to protect what matters.
The new surface comprises tiny bumps, with a peak-to-peak distance of 5 millimeters. Then a thin layer of graphene oxide, just 600 microns thick, coats the valleys between peaks.
This breakthrough builds upon previous work from Park’s laboratory. In 2020, Park and his team discovered that adding millimeter-scale textures to a surface theoretically reduced frost formation by up to 80%. The research was inspired by the rippling geometry of leaves.
“There is more frost formation on the convex regions of a leaf,” says Park. “On the concave regions (the veins), we see much less frost. People have noticed this for several thousands of years. Remarkably, there was no explanation for how these patterns form. We found that it’s the geometry — not the material — that controls this.”
Outperforming the Competition
The difference was dramatic when compared side-by-side with the best existing frost-resistant surfaces. While superhydrophobic (water repelling) and lubricant-infused surfaces resisted 5-36% of frost formation for up to 5 hours, Park’s surface resisted 100% of frost formation for 160 hours.
The raised texture peaks naturally attract water vapor, causing frost to form there first. Meanwhile, both the frost itself and the GO material act as moisture magnets, creating a dry zone near the valley where frost simply can’t form.
Built to Last: Durability in Harsh Conditions
Unlike many existing frost-resistant surfaces that use delicate microscopic structures easily damaged by scratches, this new technology is remarkably tough. When researchers deliberately scratched the GO surface and contaminated it with plastic particles, it still prevented frost formation for 15 hours under extreme conditions.
“Our anti-frosting mechanism demonstrates robustness to scratches, cracks, and contaminants, extending the life of the surface,” says Park.
The approach also works with different patterns (including hexagonal cells) and various materials (both aluminum and polymers). Multiple units can be arranged to protect larger surfaces, pointing toward practical real-world applications.
This technology offers a promising defense against frost damage for vital infrastructure operating in winter conditions, such as power lines, outdoor heat pumps, vehicle sensors, and refrigeration systems.
Frost on airplane wings can create drag, making flights dangerous or even impossible. When accumulating inside freezers and refrigerators, frost greatly reduces appliance energy efficiency. Frost can add too much weight to power lines, leading to breakage and power outages. It also can impair vehicle sensors, harming their ability to detect objects accurately.
“There currently is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach because every application has specific needs. Although airplanes only require seconds of frost resistance, powerlines operating in cold environments might require days or weeks of frost resistance, for example,” says Park.
By incorporating the textured surface into infrastructure, researchers believe companies and government agencies could save billions of dollars per year in averted maintenance costs and energy inefficiencies. The ease of fabrication through 3D printing makes this approach both practical and scalable.
As extreme winter weather becomes more common with climate change, innovations like this could help maintain critical infrastructure. By extending frost protection from hours to a week, this breakthrough might help prevent catastrophic failures like the one that left millions freezing in Texas in 2021.
Paper Summary
Methodology
To build their frost-resistant surfaces, the researchers used 3D printing to create specially shaped surfaces with precise geometric patterns—either truncated cones or hexagonal cells with thin walls. For the cone experiments, they printed hollow shells that connected to a cooling system for precise temperature control. They covered these with aluminum sheets, cleaned them thoroughly, and coated the flat valley areas with graphene oxide dough. This GO dough came from filtering a diluted GO suspension through filter paper, then kneading the resulting films with extra water to get the right consistency. They rolled this dough to about 600 micrometers thick and applied it to the valleys. For testing, they placed these surfaces in a chamber where they could control both temperature and humidity precisely. They cooled the surfaces below freezing (typically -12°C) using circulating coolant, while maintaining specific humidity levels to create conditions where frost would normally form rapidly. A camera took time-lapse photos, allowing them to track frost formation and measure frost-free areas over periods from hours to more than a week.
Results
The hybrid macrotexture-GO surfaces showed exceptional performance against frost. While regular surfaces frosted within minutes, the hybrid surfaces kept their valleys completely frost-free for more than 150 hours (about a week) under challenging conditions (supersaturation ratio P/Psat,liq = 3.9). This represents roughly 1,000 times better performance than techniques like SLIPS and superhydrophobic surfaces, which typically stay frost-free for less than 5 hours. When testing different geometric designs, vertical-walled shapes (like hexagons) maintained higher percentages of frost-free surface compared to sloped-wall designs (like truncated cones). This happens because frost forming on sloped sidewalls reduces the total frost-free percentage as conditions worsen. The team’s computer models accurately predicted these results across different conditions. Most impressively, even when they scratched and contaminated the GO surfaces, they still stayed frost-free for 15 hours under extreme conditions (P/Psat,liq = 4.5).
Limitations
Frost still forms on the “sacrificial” macrotexture peaks—this isn’t a completely frost-free solution. For applications where any frost causes problems, additional ice removal would be necessary. While the GO dough resisted scratches and contamination in tests, more research with different contaminants is needed to fully assess real-world durability. The current design works for flat surfaces with specific patterns, which may not suit all types of infrastructure. The researchers also found that size relationships between valleys and peaks affect performance, with larger valleys more likely to frost under extreme conditions. Finally, while the week-long frost prevention represents a huge improvement, the researchers didn’t determine the absolute maximum duration this approach could work beyond one week.
Discussion and Takeaways
This research matters beyond just achieving week-long frost prevention. It represents a fundamental shift in strategy—rather than trying to prevent all frost (impossible in cold, humid environments), it controls where frost forms while keeping critical areas clear. This practical approach accepts some frost formation while still protecting key surfaces. The researchers suggest several future directions, including testing other moisture-absorbing materials beyond graphene oxide, optimizing the textures for specific uses, and combining their approach with other technologies like special coatings that make ice shed easily from the frosting regions. This combination could extend the system’s effective life even further. Overall, the research shows a path toward solving the previously difficult problem of long-term frost prevention under harsh conditions, with applications for power lines, heating and cooling systems, transportation, and other critical infrastructure vulnerable to frost damage.
Funding and Disclosures
The research received partial funding from the National Science Foundation (grant CBET-2337118) and Korea Institute of Science and Technology (grant 2E32527). Several authors (Christian Machado, Benjamin Stern, Asma Ul Hosna Meem, and Kyoo-Chul Kenneth Park) are listed as inventors on a patent application (no. 18/424,059) filed by Northwestern University for “frost-resistant surfaces with macrotextured periodic lattice structures.” The other authors declared no competing interests. This transparency about potential commercial applications is important to note.
Publication Information
This research appeared in Science Advances on October 30, 2024, titled “Robust hybrid diffusion control for long-term scalable frost prevention.” The authors include Christian Machado and Benjamin Stern (who shared first authorship equally), Haiyue Huang, Asma Ul Hosna Meem, Jiaxing Huang, and Kyoo-Chul Kenneth Park (the corresponding author). The work represents collaboration between Northwestern University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, UCLA’s Division of Physical Sciences, and Westlake University’s Department of Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering in China.
