Related papers: Ice Formation on Kaolinite: Insights from Molecula…
It is surprisingly difficult to freeze water. Almost all ice that forms under "mild" conditions (temperatures > -40 degrees Celsius) requires the presence of a nucleating agent - a solid particle that facilitates the freezing process - such…
Most ice in nature forms thanks to impurities which boost the exceedingly low nucleation rate of pure supercooled water. However, the microscopic details of ice nucleation on these substances remain largely unknown. Here, we have unraveled…
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…
Despite its importance in atmospheric science, much remains unknown about the microscopic mechanism of heterogeneous ice nucleation. In this work, we perform hybrid Monte Carlo simulations of the heterogeneous nucleation of ice on a range…
What makes a material a good ice nucleating agent? Despite the importance of heterogeneous ice nucleation to a variety of fields, from cloud science to microbiology, major gaps in our understanding of this ubiquitous process still prevent…
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.…
The microscopic mechanisms controlling heterogeneous ice nucleation are complex and remain poorly understood. Although good ice nucleators are generally believed to match ice lattice and to bind water, counter examples are often identified.…
Ice nucleation is greatly important in areas as diverse as climate change, cryobiology, geology or food industry. Predicting the ability of a substrate to induce the nucleation of ice from supercooled water is a difficult problem. Here, we…
Coarse grained molecular dynamics simulations are presented in which the sensitivity of the ice nucleation rate to the hydrophilicity of a graphene nanoflake is investigated. We find that an optimal interaction strength for promoting ice…
Among all the freezing transitions, that of water into ice is probably the most relevant to biology, physics, geology or atmospheric science. In this work we investigate homogeneous ice nucleation by means of computer simulations. We…
The nucleation of crystals in liquids is one of nature's most ubiquitous phenomena, playing an important role in areas such as climate change and the production of drugs. As the early stages of nucleation involve exceedingly small time and…
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…
Ice formation is ubiquitous in nature, with important consequences in a variety of environments, including biological cells, soil, aircraft, transportation infrastructure and atmospheric clouds. However, its intrinsic kinetics and…
Despite the simplicity of the water molecule, the kinetics of ice nucleation under natural conditions can be complex. We investigated spontaneously grown ice nuclei using all-atom molecular dynamics simulations and found significant…
Heterogeneous nucleation is the main path to ice formation on Earth. The ice nucleating ability of a certain substrate is mainly determined by both molecular interactions and the structural mismatch between the ice and the substrate…
The electronic properties and optical response of ice and water are intricately shaped by their molecular structure, including the quantum mechanical nature of hydrogen atoms. In spite of numerous studies appeared over decades, a…
Ice nucleation plays a significant role in a large number of natural and technological processes, but it is challenging to investigate experimentally because of the small time (ns) and short length scales (nm) involved. On the other hand,…
In this work, we perform a systematic computer simulation study of ice premelting, and explore the thickness and structure of quasi-liquid layers formed at the interface of ice with substrates of different hydrophilicity. Our study shows…
Water freezing is ubiquitous on Earth, affecting many areas from biology to climate science and aviation technology. Probing the atomic structure in the homogeneous ice nucleation process from scratch is of great value but still…
Contact freezing is a mode of atmospheric ice nucleation in which a collision between a dry ice nucleating particle (INP) and a water droplet results in considerably faster heterogeneous nucleation. The molecular mechanism of such…