Will this be the end of ice scrape misery?

SCRAPING the ice from car windscreens is one of the curses of winter.

But it could soon become a thing of the past with new technology that reduces the build-up of ice by 90 per cent without heat or chemicals.

The technology could also be used on aircraft wings, reducing delays that occur when they freeze up, and roads.

It is being developed at Virginia Tech in the US and while it is currently being applied to aluminium, scientists say it could work with any surface.

The new surface contains a microscopic array of elevated grooves where lines of ice form. These strips of ice create low pressure in surrounding grooves, helping keep overlapping areas free of frost even in humid, sub-freezing conditions.

The ice strips make up 10 per cent of the material’s surface, with the remaining 90 per cent dry. Scientists say ‘the material you use could be virtually anything’.

Farzad Ahmadi, a doctoral student at Virginia Tech, said: ‘Frosting is a big issue and researchers have been working to solve this problem for years. Traditional approaches have relied on the application of antifreeze chemicals or energy inputs like heat.

‘Even the age-old method of throwing salt down on roadways is essentially a chemical treatment.’

Other coatings for surfaces that prevent frost formation have been developed but these tend to wear off easily.

Mr Ahmadi said: ‘For this project, we’re not using any kind of special coating, chemicals or energy to overcome frost.

‘Instead we’re using the chemistry of ice itself to prevent frost from forming.’

Anti-freeze chemicals are a hazard to the environment in waterways. It can take thousands of gallons of anti-freeze to clear an aircraft wing of ice.

Professor Jonathan Boreyko, of Virginia Tech’s Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics, said: ‘The real power of this concept is that the ice strips themselves are the chemistry, which means the material we use is irrelevant.

‘As long as you have that proper pattern of sacrificial ice, the material you use could be virtually anything. So there are a lot of possibilities.’

The research is published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.