Condensation frosting and passive anti-frosting

As exemplified by the extreme cold weather hitting central China and causing great economic losses in 2018, as well as the 2021 Texas power crisis involving more than 4.5 million homes and businesses in the United States owing to frosting/icing, anti-frosting/anti-icing has been a long-standing challenge in modern society. Over the past decade, various approaches have been used to achieve anti-frosting, including active approaches and passive approaches. Given that active anti-frosting strategies are inefficient, energy consuming, and ponderous, tremendous progress has been made for passive anti-frosting strategies, owing to the booming of material engineering and the advanced measuring approaches. This review focuses on the process of condensation frosting, progress on passive anti-frosting, and prospects for this field. We aim to bring a comprehensive framework on passive anti-frosting in the broad sense: from inhibition of ice nucleation to reduction of frost/ice adhesion, from nanoscale to millimeter scale, and from surface design to material selection.