Scientists have discovered yet another amazing aspect of the weird and wonderful behavior of water—this time when subjected to nanoscale confinement at sub-zero temperatures.
The finding that a crystalline substance can readily give up water at temperatures as low as −70 °C, published in the journal Nature on April 12, has major implications for the development of materials designed to extract water from the atmosphere.
A team of supramolecular chemists at Stellenbosch University (SU), consisting of Dr. Alan Eaby, Prof. Catharine Esterhuysen and Prof. Len Barbour, made this discovery while trying to understand the peculiar behavior of a type of crystal that first piqued their interest about ten years ago.
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