The GibsonGroup, in collaboration with Dr Tom Whale, have published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, showing that polymer nanoparticles can inhibit ice growth.

The particles were prepared using polymerization-induced self-assembly, which is a synthetically scalable method to obtain well-defined nanoparticles. These particles could stop ice recrystallisation and in some cases appeared to bind the ice faces, opening new opportunities to mimic the complex function of ice binding proteins, which have huge biotechnological potential.

Read the paper here

Polymer Self-Assembly Induced Enhancement of Ice Recrystallization Inhibition