A team of scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) and the University of Zurich have found a new way to prevent water from starting to turn into ice crystals even at very low temperatures. During the experiments carried out by these scientists, the structure of water continued to correspond to the liquid phase even at a temperature of -263 degrees Celsius.
And, as is often the case in science, the discovery of "non-freezing water" became a side discovery when scientists were engaged in the synthesis of a new class of lipid substances in order to create a synthetic form of biological matter called lipidic mesophase.
During the synthesis of a new material, lipids, through a self-assembly process, formed membranes that showed the properties of large and thick molecules. A whole network of thinnest channels, less than a nanometer in diameter, was formed in these membranes. The water filling these channels simply did not have enough space to form ice crystals as the temperature dropped.
The scientists used liquid helium to cool the lipid mesophase to -263 degrees Celsius, just ten degrees above absolute zero. And even under such conditions, the water inside the channels of the lipid membrane did not turn into ice, but remained in a liquid state.
The main interest of scientists in these studies was the ratio of water and lipids in the lipid mesophase material, which determines some of the amazing properties of such a material. It was found that if the mixture contains 12 percent water, then the structure of the mesophase will turn from cubic to flaky at -15 degrees Celsius.
The lipid membranes that scientists have synthesized are copies of the cell membranes of certain types of bacteria, which, thanks to these membranes, are able to survive in very cold environments. And a new soft synthetic material, which was created by scientists, can be used in cases where it is necessary to prevent the process of freezing water at any low temperatures.