Related papers: Skin supersolidity slipperizing ice
When we lower the temperature of a liquid, at some point we meet a first order phase transition to the crystal. Yet, under certain conditions it is possible to keep the system in its metastable phase and to avoid crystallization. In this…
We review the main properties of a supersolid. We describe first the macroscopic equation that satisfies a supersolid based on general arguments and symmetries and show that such solids might exhibit simultaneously or independently both…
The squeezing of soft solids, the constrained growth of biological tissues, and the swelling of soft elastic solids such as gels can generate large compressive stresses at their surfaces. This causes the otherwise smooth surface of such a…
Bulk water presents a large number of crystalline and amorphous ices. Hydrophobic nanoconfinement is known to affect the tendency of water to form ice and to reduce the melting temperature. However, a systematic study of the ice phases in…
The slipperiness of ice is an everyday-life phenomenon which, surprisingly, remains controversial despite a long scientific history. The very small friction measured on ice is classically attributed to the presence of a thin…
Sea ice is highly complex due to the inhomogeneity of the physical properties (e.g. temperature and salinity) as well as the permeability and mixture of water and a matrix of sea ice and/or sea ice crystals. Such complexity has proven…
Supersolidity of glasses is explained as a property of an unusual state of condensed matter. This state is essentially different from both normal and superfluid solid states. The mechanism of the phenomenon is the transfer of mass by…
Water, in its three phases, is ubiquitous, and the surface properties of ice is important to clarifying the process of melting, as well as to various other fields, including geophysics. As such, the subject has been studied both…
Ice formation is one of the most common and important processes on earth and almost always occurs at the surface of a material. A basic understanding of how the physicochemical properties of a material's surface affect its ability to form…
We study experimentally the enhancement of splashing due to solidification. Investigating the impact of water drops on dry smooth surfaces, we show that the transition velocity to splash can be drastically reduced by cooling the surface…
In the recent years many research groups have studied slippery properties on lubricating fluid infused rough surfaces using hydrophobic substrates. These surfaces show excellent slippery behaviour for water and other liquids. Here we…
Ice nucleation is a process of great relevance in physics, chemistry, technology and environmental sciences, much theoretical and experimental efforts have been devoted to its understanding, but still it remains a topic of intense research.…
Understanding the coupled dynamics of liquid-solid phase change and fluid flows is crucial in a wide range of geophysical and industrial applications. When freezing occurs in saline water, the newly formed ice is mushy, with a porous…
The properties of some forms of water ice reserve still intriguing surprises. Besides the several stable or metastable phases of pure ice, solid mixtures of water with gases are precursors of other ices, since in some cases they may be…
When an ice crystal is born from liquid water two key changes occur: (i) the molecules order; and (ii) the mobility of the molecules drops as they adopt their lattice positions. Most research on ice nucleation (and crystallization in…
What characterises a solid is its way to respond to external stresses. Ordered solids, such crystals, display an elastic regime followed by a plastic one, both well understood microscopically in terms of lattice distortion and dislocations.…
A heat exchange interface at subzero temperature in a water vapor environment, exhibits high probability of frost formation due to freezing condensation, a factor that markedly decreases the heat transfer efficacy due to the considerable…
The friction of a stationary moving skate on smooth ice is investigated, in particular in relation to the formation of a thin layer of water between skate and ice. It is found that the combination of ploughing and sliding gives a friction…
Surface icing affects the safety and performance of numerous processes in technology. Previous studies mostly investigated freezing of individual droplets. The interaction among multiple droplets during freezing is investigated less,…
Water's phase diagram displays enormous complexity with currently 17 experimentally-confirmed polymorphs of ice and several more predicted computationally. For almost 120 years, it has been a stomping ground for scientific discovery and ice…