Long-term deep-supercooling of large-volume water and red cell suspensions via surface sealing with immiscible liquids

Supercooling of aqueous solutions is a fundamentally and practically important physical phenomenon with numerous applications in biopreservation and beyond. Under normal conditions, heterogeneous nucleation mechanisms critically prohibit the simultaneous long-term (> 1 week), large volume (> 1 ml), and low temperatures (
Supercooled water is susceptible to spontaneous freezing, and preventing this process is a challenge. Here, the authors use surface sealing with immiscible liquids to eliminate primary ice nucleation at the water/air interface, enabling deep supercooling of large volumes of water and red cell suspensions for long time periods.