Imagining a Airplane Skin That Repels Ice

De-icing aircraft with chemicals is expensive, environmentally unfriendly and time-consuming, as stranded passengers during winter blizzards may be well aware.

For the last decade researchers have been exploring the possibility of building planes with hydrophobic, or water-repellent, materials that would not require de-icing.

But now, researchers from M.I.T. report that this approach is flawed. Although a surface might be water-repellent, it may not be ice- or frost-repellent. Their findings appear in the journal Applied Physics Letters.

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