Sushant Anand receives NSF Career Award, publishing paper on new anti-icing material

Branco Weiss Alumnus Sushant Anand has received the prestigious NSF Career Award. The US National Science Foundation awarded Dr. Anand’s project titled “Condensation-driven phase-transitioning surfaces” with USD 529,561 over a five-year period. The goal of this project is to understand condensation on a class of existing materials that can undergo phase-transition due to condensation itself. Such materials possess several beneficial attributes of solid and liquid surfaces that could be the key to overcome many of the challenges faced by the existing superhydrophobic or liquid infused surfaces.

While researchers have known about phase change materials for a long time, their unique anti-icing and anti-frosting properties have not been investigated before. In an article published in Advanced Materials, Dr. Anand and his team at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Engineering describe for the first time several unique properties of materials known as phase-switching liquids, or PSLs, that hold promise as next-generation anti-icing materials. PSLs can delay ice and frost formation up to 300 times longer than conventional superhydrophobic coatings being developed in laboratories. Because PSLs are solids at low temperatures, they most probably wouldn’t need to be applied as often as liquid anti-icing agents because they would have better staying power. Beyond delaying icing/frosting, such materials could be very useful for enhancing condensation and dew harvesting.

Read the project page on the NSF website

Read the paper

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