To comprehend the complexities of the ice-water interface, we perform a study that attempts to correlate the altered dynamics of water to its perturbed structure at, and due to, the interface. The deviation from bulk values of structural and dynamical quantities at the interface are obtained by computer simulations. Water molecules are found to get exchanged between the ice-like and water-like domains of the interface with a time scale of the order of ~10 ps. To investigate the effect of interfaces in general, we study three other systems, namely (i) water between two hydrophobic nano-slabs, (ii) water at protein and (iii) DNA surfaces. In all these systems, we find that the difference from bulk properties become negligible beyond ~1 nm, with structural features converging to bulk values faster than the dynamical properties. Even in the case of the latter, we find that single-particle and collective properties behave differently. The approach to bulk values is rapid except for collective shell-dipole moments. We present a new insightful characterization of the surfaces by establishing a quantitative correlation between tetrahedrality order parameter (q_td) and dynamics by diffusion (D) and angular jumps. In the ice-water system, we find that the variation of qtd, as we move from solid to the liquid phase, correlated well with D. The correlation is found to be present in all the interfaces studied. Our results can be used to explain the experimental outcomes of the likes of dielectric relaxation and solvation dynamics.
Ice-water, water-vapor interfaces and ice surface are studied by molecular dynamics simulations with the SPC/E model of water molecules having the purpose to estimate the profiles of electrostatic potential across the interfaces. We have proposed a methodology for calculating the profiles of electrostatic potential based on a trial particle, which showed good agreement for the case of electrostatic potential profile of the water-vapor interface of TIP4P model calculated in another way. The measured profile of electrostatic potential for the pure ice-water interface decreases towards the liquid…
We examined O:H-O bond relaxation under compression,heating,molecular undercoordination and claimed a universal resolution to the best-known mysteries of water ice such as ice foating, ice slipperiness, relegation and warm water cools faster. progress shows that O:H-O bond segmental disparity and O-O repulsivity form the soul dictating the extraordinary adaptivity, cooperativity, recoverability, and sensitivity of water and ice.
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 nanoconfinement is hampered by the computational cost of simulations at very low temperatures. Here we develop a coarse-grained model for a water monolayer in hydrophobic nanoconfinement and study the formation of ice by Mote Carlo simulations. We find two ice phases: low-density-crystal ice at low pressure and high-density hexatic ice at high pressure, an in…
On the basis of the experimental data we suggest that water monomers could be trapped in channels running through ice-like clusters in water. Our argument relies on a simple model that describes the motion of a dipole particle inside a channel in the presence of an electric field with linear gradient. The model admits of both finite and infinite regimes of motion so that the finite one could correspond to the particle being confined to a channel.
Hydrogen-bond forms a pair of asymmetric, coupled, H-bridged oscillators with ultra-short-range interactions and memory. hydrogen bond cooperative relaxation and the associated binding electron entrapment and nonbonding electron polarization discriminate water and ice from other usual materials in the physical anomalies. As a strongly correlated fluctuating system, water prefers the statistically mean of tetrahedrally-coordinated structure with a supersolid skin that is elastic, polarized, ice like, hydrophobic, with 3/4 density.
Heterogeneous ice growth exhibits a maximum in freezing rate arising from the competition between kinetics and the thermodynamic driving force between the solid and liquid states. Here, we use molecular dynamics simulations to elucidate the atomistic details of this competition, focusing on water properties in the interfacial region along the secondary prismatic direction. The crystal growth velocity is maximized when the efficiency of converting interfacial water molecules to ice, collectively known as the attachment kinetics, is greatest. We find water molecules that contact the intermediate…
We use computer simulations to investigate the effect of salt on homogeneous ice nucleation. The melting point of the employed solution model was obtained both by direct coexistence simulations and by thermodynamic integration from previous calculations of the water chemical potential. Using a Seeding approach, in which we simulate ice seeds embedded in a supercooled aqueous solution, we compute the nucleation rate as a function of temperature for a 1.85 NaCl mole per water kilogram solution at 1 bar. To improve the accuracy and reliability of our calculations we combine Seeding with the direc…
The x-ray absorption spectra of water and ice are calculated with a many-body approach for electron-hole excitations. The experimental features, including the small effects of temperature change in the liquid, are quantitatively reproduced from molecular configurations generated by ab-initio molecular dynamics. The spectral difference between the solid and the liquid is due to two major short range order effects. One, due to breaking of hydrogen bonds, enhances the pre-edge intensity in the liquid. The other, due to a non-bonded molecular fraction in the first coordination shell, affects the m…
We investigate with computer simulations the effect of applying an electric field on the water-to-ice transition. We use a combination of state-of-the-art simulation techniques to obtain phase boundaries and crystal growth rates (direct coexistence), nucleation rates (seeding) and interfacial free energies (seeding and mold integration). First, we consider ice Ih, the most stable polymorph in the absence of a field. Its normal melting temperature, speed of crystal growth and nucleation rate (for a given supercooling) diminish as the intensity of the field goes up. Then, we study polarised cubi…
To predict the radiative forcing of clouds it is necessary to know the rate with which ice homogeneously nucleates in supercooled water. Such rate is often measured in drops to avoid the presence of impurities. At large supercooling small (nanoscopic) drops must be used to prevent simultaneous nucleation events. The pressure inside such drops is larger than the atmospheric one by virtue of the Laplace equation. In this work, we take into account such pressure raise in order to predict the nucleation rate in droplets using the TIP4P/Ice water model. We start from a recent estimate of the maximu…
We investigate the structural similarities between liquid water and 53 ices, including 20 knowncrystalline phases. We base such similarity comparison on the local environments that consist of atoms within a certain cutoff radius of a central atom. We reveal that liquid water explores the localenvironments of the diverse ice phases, by directly comparing the environments in these phases using general atomic descriptors, and also by demonstrating that a machine-learning potential trained on liquid water alone can predict the densities, the lattice energies, and vibrational properties of theices.…
The packing order of molecules and the distance between adjacent oxygen atoms (dOO) in water and ice are most basic yet puzzling. Here we present a scaling solution for this purpose based only on the mass density (gcm-3), (Equation) where dL is the length (Å) of the O:H van der Waals bond and dH the H-O polar-covalent bond projecting on the O---O line. Validated by the measured proton symmetrization of compressed ice, dOO of water and ice, and dOO expansion at water surface, this solution confirms that the fluctuated, tetrahedrally-coordinated structure is unique for water ice.
The lack of accurate low-energy electron scattering cross sections for liquid water is a substantial source of uncertainty in the modelling of radiation chemistry and biology. The use of existing amorphous ice scattering cross sections for lack of liquid data has been discussed controversially over decades. Here, we compare experimental photoemission data of liquid water with corresponding predictions using amorphous ice cross sections, with the aim of resolving the debate regarding the difference of electron scattering in liquid water and amorphous ice. We find very similar scattering propert…
We study the effect of salts on the thickness of wetting films on melting ice and interactions acting on CO$_2$ bubble near ice-water and vapor-water interfaces. Governing mechanisms are the Lifshitz and the double-layer interactions in the respective three-layer geometries. We demonstrate that the latter depend on the Casimir--Polder interaction of the salt ions dissolved in water with the respective ice, vapour and CO$_2$ interfaces, as calculated using different models for their effective polarizability in water. Significant variation in the predicted thickness of the equilibrium water film…
By molecular dynamics simulations, we have studied the enhanced heating process of salty ice and water by the electric field of applied microwaves at 2.5 GHz, and those in the range 2.5-10 GHz for the frequency dependence. We show that water molecules in salty ice are allowed to rotate in response to the microwave electric field to the extent comparable to those in pure water, because the molecules in salty ice are loosely tied by hydrogen bonds with adjacent molecules unlike the case of rigidly bonded pure ice. The weakening of hydrogen-bonded network of molecules in salty ice is mainly cause…
Motivated by recent experiments showing the promise of noble gases as cryoprotectants, we perform molecular dynamics modeling of phase transitions in water with xenon under cooling. We study the structure and dynamics of xenon water solution as a function of temperature. Homogeneous nucleation of clathrate hydrate phase is observed and characterized. As the temperature is further reduced we observe hints of dissociation of clathrate due to stronger hydrophobic hydration, pointing towards a possible instability of clathrate at cryogenic temperatures and conversion to an amorphous phase comprise…
Experiments and computer simulations have established that liquid water's surfaces can deviate in important ways from familiar bulk behavior. Even in the simplest case of an air-water interface, distinctive layering, orientational biases, and hydrogen bond arrangements have been reported, but an overarching picture of their origins and relationships has been incomplete. Here we show that a broad set of such observations can be understood through an analogy with the basal face of crystalline ice. Using simulations, we specifically demonstrate that water and ice surfaces share a set of structura…
Despite great efforts over the past 50 years, the simulation of water still presents significant challenges and open questions. At room temperature and pressure, the collective molecular interactions and dynamics of water molecules may form local structural arrangements that are non-trivial to classify. Here we employ a data-driven approach built on Smooth Overlap of Atomic Position (SOAP) that allow us to compare and classify how widely used classical models represent liquid water. Macroscopically, the obtained results are rationalized based on water thermodynamic observables. Microscopically…
Water is one of the most abundant substances on Earth, and ice, i.e., solid water, has more than 18 known phases. Normally ice in nature exists only as Ice Ih, Ice Ic, or a stacking disordered mixture of both. Although many theoretical efforts have been devoted to understanding the thermodynamics of different ice phases at ambient temperature and pressure, there still remains many puzzles. We simulated the reversible transitions between water and different ice phases by performing full atom molecular dynamics simulations. Using the enhanced sampling method MetaITS with the two selected X-ray d…
In order to study the heating process of water by the microwaves of 2.5-20GHz frequencies, we have performed molecular dynamics simulations by adopting a non-polarized water model that have fixed point charges on rigid-body molecules. All runs are started from the equilibrated states derived from the I$_{c}$ ice with given density and temperature. In the presence of microwaves, the molecules of liquid water exhibit rotational motion whose average phase is delayed from the microwave electric field. Microwave energy is transferred to the kinetic and inter-molecular energies of water, where one t…
We have investigated the formation of 10-50 mm long ``ice spikes'' that sometimes appear on the free surface of water when it solidifies. By freezing water under different conditions, we measured the probability of ice spike formation as a function of: 1) the air temperature in the freezing chamber, 2) air motion in the freezing chamber (which promotes evaporative cooling), 3) the quantity of dissolved salts in the water, and 4) the size, shape, and composing material of the freezing vessel. We found that the probability of ice spike formation is greatest when the air temperature is near -7 C,…
Skins of water and ice share the same attribute of supersolidity characterized by the identical H-O vibration frequency of 3450 cm-1. Molecular undercoordination and inter-electron-pair repulsion shortens the H-O bond and lengthen the O:H nonbond, leading to a dual process of nonbonding electron polarization. This relaxation-polarization process enhances the dipole moment, elasticity,viscosity, thermal stability of these skins with 25% density loss, which is responsible for the hydrophobicity and toughness of water skin and for the slippery of ice.
In this work we study the ice-water interface under coexistence conditions by means of molecular simulations using the TIP4P/2005 water model. Following the methodology proposed by Hoyt and co-workers [J. J. Hoyt, M. Asta and A. Karma, Phys. Rev. Lett., 86, 5530, (2001)] we measure the interfacial free energy of ice with liquid water by analysing the spectrum of capillary fluctuations of the interface. We get an orientationally averaged interfacial free energy of 27(2) mN/m, in good agreement with a recent estimate obtained from simulation data of the size of critical clusters [E. Sanz, C. Veg…
Molecular dynamic simulations were performed for ice Ih with a free surface. The simulations were carried out at several temperatures and each run lasted more than 7ns. At high temperatures the ice melts. It is demonstrated that the melting process starts at the surface and propagates to the bulk of the ice block. Already at the temperatures below the melting point, we observe a thin liquid layer at the ice surface, but the block of ice remains stable along the run. As soon as the temperature reaches the melting point the entire ice block melts. Our results demonstrate that, unlike in the case…
At air-water interfaces, the Lifshitz interaction by itself does not promote ice growth. On the contrary, we find that the Lifshitz force promotes the growth of an ice film, up to 1-8 nm thickness, near silica-water interfaces at the triple point of water. This is achieved in a system where the combined effect of the retardation and the zero frequency mode influences the short-range interactions at low temperatures, contrary to common understanding. Cancellation between the positive and negative contributions in the Lifshitz spectral function is reversed in silica with high porosity. Our resul…
One of water's unsolved puzzles is the question of what determines the lowest temperature to which it can be cooled before freezing to ice. The supercooled liquid has been probed experimentally to near the homogeneous nucleation temperature TH{\approx}232 K, yet the mechanism of ice crystallization - including the size and structure of critical nuclei - has not yet been resolved. The heat capacity and compressibility of liquid water anomalously increase upon moving into the supercooled region according to a power law that would diverge at Ts{\approx}225 K,(1,2) so there may be a link between w…
The mysterious nature and functionality of water and ice skins remain baffling to the community since 1859 when Farady firstly proposed liquid skin lubricating ice. Here we show the presence of supersolid phase that covers both water and ice using Raman spectroscopy measurements and quantum calculations. In the skin of two molecular layers thick, molecular undercoordination shortens the H-O bond by ~16% and lengthens the OH nonbond by ~25% through repulsion between electron pairs on adjacent O atoms, which depresses the density from 0.92 for bulk ice to 0.75 gcm-3. The O:H-O cooperative relaxa…
Dielectric spectra (10^4-10^11 Hz) of water and ice at 0 °C are considered in terms of proton conductivity and compared to each other. In this picture, the Debye relaxations, centered at 1/τ_W ~ 20 GHz (in water) and 1/τ_I ~ 5 kHz (in ice), are seen as manifestations of diffusion of separated charges in the form of H3O+ and OH- ions. The charge separation results from the self-dissociation of H2O molecules, and is accompanied by recombination in order to maintain the equilibrium concentration, N. The charge recombination is a diffusion-controlled process with characteristic lifetimes of τ_W an…
In this work we measured Surface Energy and Freezing Temperature of supercooled water droplets in air. We find that freezing of water droplets is triggered at the water-air interface and that freezing progresses faster on the surface than in the bulk. The Freezing Point of water droplets is strongly depressed by dryness in air and how humidity triggers freezing. Additionally it is shown to be a Surface phenomenon related to a transfer of Entropy from water vapour to the surface of ice.
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 self-lubricating film of meltwater between the slider and the ice. But while the macroscale friction behavior of ice and snow has been widely investigated, very little is known about the interfacial water film and its mechanical properties. In this work, we develop a stroke-probe force measurement technique to uncover the microscopic mechanisms underlying ice lubrication. …
With numerical simulations of the mW model of water, we investigate the energetic stability of crystalline clusters for both Ice I (cubic and hexagonal ice) and for the metastable Ice 0 phase as a function of the cluster size. Under a large variety of forming conditions, we find that the most stable cluster changes as a function of size: at small sizes the Ice 0 phase produces the most stable clusters, while at large sizes there is a crossover to Ice I clusters. We further investigate the growth of crystalline clusters with the seeding technique and study the growth patterns of different cryst…
In contrast to the abundance of work on the anomalous behavior of water, the relationship between the water's thermodynamic anomalies and kinetics of phase transition from metastable water is relatively unexplored. In this work, we have employed classical density functional theory to provide a unified and coherent picture of nucleation (both vapor and ice) from metastable water, especially at negative pressure conditions. Our results suggest a peculiar non-monotonic temperature dependence of liquid-vapor surface tension at temperatures where liquid-vapor coexistence is metastable with respect …
Beyond the snow line of protoplanetary discs and inside the dense core of molecular clouds, the temperature of gas is low enough for water vapour to condense into amorphous ices on the surface of preexisting refractory dust particles. Recent numerical simulations and laboratory experiments suggest that condensation of the vapour promotes dust coagulation in such a cold region. However, in the numerical simulations, cohesion of refractory materials is often underestimated, while in the laboratory experiments, water vapour collides with surfaces at more frequent intervals compared to the real co…
We report simulated infrared spectra of deuterated water and ice using Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics with maximally localized Wannier functions. Experimental features are accurately reproduced within the harmonic approximation. By decomposing the lineshapes in terms of intra and intermolecular dipole correlation functions we find that short-range intermolecular dynamic charge fluctuations associated to hydrogen bonds are prominent over the entire spectral range. Our analysis reveals the origin of several spectral features and identifies network bending modes in the far IR range.
We perform computer simulations of the quasiliquid layer of ice formed at the ice-vapor interface close to the ice Ih-liquid-vapor triple point of water. Our study shows that the two distinct surfaces bounding the film behave at small wavelengths as atomically rough and independent ice-water and water-vapor interfaces. For long wavelengths, however, the two surfaces couple, large scale parallel fluctuations are inhibited, and the ice-vapor interface becomes smooth. Our results could help explain the complex morphology of ice crystallites.
Using Lifshitz theory we assess the role of van der Waals forces at interfaces of ice and water. The results are combined with measured structural forces from computer simulations to develop a quantitative model of the surface free energy of premelting films. This input is employed within the framework of wetting theory and allows us to predict qualitatively the behavior of quasi-liquid layer thickness as a function of ambient conditions. Our results emphasizes the significance of vapor pressure. The ice vapor interface is shown to exhibit only incomplete premelting, but the situation can shif…
The fascinating ability of algae, insects and fishes to survive at temperatures below normal freezing is realized by antifreeze proteins (AFPs). These are surface-active molecules and interact with the diffusive water/ice interface thus preventing complete solidification. We propose a new dynamical mechanism on how these proteins inhibit the freezing of water. We apply a Ginzburg-Landau type approach to describe the phase separation in the two-component system (ice, AFP). The free energy density involves two fields: one for the ice phase with a low AFP concentration, and one for liquid water w…
