Room-temperature ice

(PhysOrg.com) -- By confining water in nano-sized spaces, physicists from Leiden University in the Netherlands have turned water into ice at room temperature...

In their recent study published in Physical Review Letters, Jinesh and Frenken have demonstrated direct experimental evidence for water transforming into ice at room temperature when confined between two objects. By scanning the tungsten tip of a high-res friction force microscope over a graphite surface, the physicists showed that the water trapped in between due to capillary condensation rapidly transforms into ice due to confinement…

It is difficult to foresee an application at this level of invention,” Jinesh said. “The foreseeable difficulty is that in MEMS and NEMS, where the contact areas are shrinking in dimensions, ice formation could be a big problem that causes immediate failure of the devices. On the other hand, to increase friction wherever necessary, this technique could be employed, but it is so far a fiction, I would say!”

Don't ask. I don't understand it either. I even had to look up MEMS and NEMS.