Scraping an icy windshield can be a seasonal struggle for those that live in colder climates. But engineers from UBC’s Okanagan campus are aiming to ease that winter frustration with a new surface coating that can shed ice from large areas using little effort.
The new anti-ice coating is a new class of surfaces called low interfacial toughness (LIT) materials and were developed by UBC Okanagan researchers in a new study published this week in the journal Science.
“For those experienced in the early morning windshield scrape, it should come as no surprise that it normally takes quite a lot of force to remove large areas of ice,” explains Kevin Golovin, assistant professor at the UBCO School of Engineering and study lead author. “That’s not the case with LIT materials. Imagine simply brushing the ice away or letting it sliding off the windshield from its own weight—that’s how effective LIT materials can be.”
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