{"id":238325,"date":"2026-06-04T02:32:23","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T07:32:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/out-of-plane-ice-bridges-reveal-new-way-to-suppress-frost-spreading"},"modified":"2026-06-04T02:32:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T07:32:23","slug":"out-of-plane-ice-bridges-reveal-new-way-to-suppress-frost-spreading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/out-of-plane-ice-bridges-reveal-new-way-to-suppress-frost-spreading","title":{"rendered":"Out-of-plane ice bridges reveal new way to suppress frost spreading"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/out-of-plane-ice-bridges-reveal-new-way-to-suppress-frost-spreading2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A research team led by Professor Nenad Miljkovic in The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has published a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41567-026-03296-2\" target=\"_blank\">breakthrough study<\/a> in <i>Nature Physics<\/i>. The work reports the first experimental discovery of a previously unknown frost propagation mechanism\u2014a \u201csuspended ice bridge\u201d\u2014offering new pathways for anti-frosting surface design.<\/p>\n<p>Frost formation plays a critical role in many engineering systems, including air-source heat pumps, refrigeration systems and aerospace applications. At the microscopic level, frost mainly spreads through the formation of \u201cice bridges\u201d that connect neighboring supercooled liquid droplets, enabling freezing to propagate rapidly across a surface. For decades, these ice bridges were widely assumed to grow along the solid surface.<\/p>\n<p>This assumption, largely based on conventional top-view imaging, has shaped existing theoretical models and anti-frosting strategies. However, the Illinois team\u2019s study reveals that this long-held view is incomplete.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A research team led by Professor Nenad Miljkovic in The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has published a breakthrough study in Nature Physics. The work reports the first experimental discovery of a previously unknown frost propagation mechanism\u2014a \u201csuspended ice bridge\u201d\u2014offering new pathways for anti-frosting surface design. Frost formation plays a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,1491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-engineering","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}