Aqueous solutions of LiCl are probably the most studied electrolyte solutions related to the complexity of liquid water at low temperatures. Despite the large amount of available experimental data hardly any computational studies were performed on LiCl solutions in this context. In this study, we present molecular dynamics simulations of LiCl-water at ambient and supercooled conditions spanning a large concentration range. The molecular insight gained provides information on how the presence of the ions impacts the hydrogen bond network. It is found that this influence changes appreciably when supercooled states are considered. While the local structure of water molecules beyond the first hydration shells barely changes with concentration at room temperature, a change is found for those molecules at low temperature. Additionally, we scrutinize the possibility of a phase separation in this system as indicated by several experimental studies. Our analyses do not show signs of such a phase separation at 240 K, but are consistent with a possible separation at even lower temperatures.
Supercooling of water can be easily studied with a simple apparatus suitable for the student laboratory. We describe such an apparatus and its capabilities. The parameters influencing supercooling include the initial temperature of the water and the temperature and the type of chilling medium. We correlate the occurrence of supercooling with the ability of the chilling medium to promptly nucleate ice; if it nucleates promptly, the layer of ice crystals formed on the boundary will initiate freezing of the bulk water without supercooling. If the chilling medium is unable to nucleate ice promptly…
Supercooling of aqueous solutions below their melting point without any crystallization 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 (< -10 oC) supercooling of aqueous solutions. Here, in order to overcome this bottleneck and enable novel and practical supercooling applications, we report on the use of surface sealing of water by an oil phase to drastically…
Using heterodyne-detected optical Kerr effect (HD-OKE) measurements, we investigate the vibrational dynamics and the structural relaxation of water nanoconfined in Vycor porous silica samples (pore size $\simeq~4~nm$ ) at different levels of hydration and temperatures. At low level of hydration, corresponding to two complete superficial water layers, no freezing occurs and water remains mobile at all the investigated temperatures with dynamic features similar, but not equal, to the bulk water. The fully hydrated sample shows formation of ice at about 248 K, this process does not involve all th…
We present the results of a molecular dynamics simulation study of thermodynamic and structural properties upon supercooling of a low concentration sodium chloride solution in TIP4P water and the comparison with the corresponding bulk quantities. We study the isotherms and the isochores for both the aqueous solution and bulk water. The comparison of the phase diagrams shows that thermodynamic properties of the solution are not merely shifted with respect to the bulk. Moreover, from the analysis of the thermodynamic curves, both the spinodal line and the temperatures of maximum density curve ca…
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 evaluate the size of the critical cluster and the nucleation rate for temperatures ranging between 15K and 35K below melting. We use the TIP4P/2005 and the TIP4P/Ice water models. Both give similar results when compared at the same temperature difference with the model's melting temperature. The size of the critical cluster varies from $\sim$8000 molecules (radius…
A hydrated 1,2-dimyristoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphorylcholine (DMPC) lipid membrane is investigated using an all atom molecular dynamics simulation at 308K to find out the physical sources of universal slow relaxation of hydration layers. Continuously residing interface water (IW) hydrogen bonded to each other and concertedly to different moieties of lipid heads are identified. The non-gaussian parameter of all IW show a crossover from cage vibration to translational diffusion. A significant non-gaussianity is observed for the IW prevailing large length correlations in translational van Hove funct…
Hydration or interfacial water present in biomolecules and inorganic solids have been shown to exhibit a dynamical transition upon supercooling. However, an understanding of the extent of the underlying surface hydrophilicity as well as the local distribution of hydrophilic/hydrophobic patches on the dynamical transition is unexplored. Here, we use molecular dynamics simulations with a TIP4P/2005 water model to study translational and rotational relaxation dynamics of interfacial water on graphene surfaces. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of both surface chemistry as …
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 study the evolution of dynamic fluctuations averaged over different space lengths and time scales to characterize spatially and temporally heterogeneous behavior of TIP4P/2005 water in liquid and supercooled states. Analysing a million particle simulated system we provide evidence of the existence, upon supercooling, of a significant enhancement of spatially localized dynamic fluctuations stemming from regions of correlated mobile molecules. We show that both the magnitude of the departure from the value expected for the system-size dependence of an uncorrelated system and the molecular siz…
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…
Molecular dynamics simulations are carried out to explore the dynamical crossover phenomenon in strongly confined and mildly supercooled water in graphene oxide nanopores. In contrast to studies where confinement is used to study the properties of bulk water, we are interested in the dynamical transitions for strongly confined water in the absence of any bulk-like water. The influence of the physicochemical nature of the graphene oxide surface on the dynamical transitions is investigated by varying the extent of hydrophobicity on the confining surfaces placed at an inter-surface separation of …
Single particle dynamics of water confined in a nanopore is studied through Computer Molecular Dynamics. The pore is modeled to represent the average properties of a pore of Vycor glass. Dynamics is analyzed at different hydration levels and upon supercooling. At all hydration levels and all temperatures investigated a layering effect is observed due to the strong hydrophilicity of the substrate. The time density correlators show, already at ambient temperature, strong deviations from the Debye and the stretched exponential behavior. Both on decreasing hydration level and upon supercooling we …
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…
A sequential of concepts developed in last decade has enabled a resolution to multiple anomalies of water ice and its low-dimensionality, particularly. Developed concepts include the coupled hydrogen bond oscillator pair, segmental specific heat, three-body coupling potentials, quasisolidity, and supersolidity. Resolved anomalies include ice buoyancy, ice slipperiness, water skin toughness, supercooling and superheating at the nanoscale, etc. Evidence shows consistently that molecular undercoordination shortens the HO bond and stiffens its phonon while undercoordination does the OH nonbond con…
Liquid water exhibits anomalous behavior in the supercooled region. A popular hypothesis to explain supercooled water's anomalies is the existence of a metastable liquid-liquid transition terminating at a critical point. The hypothesized phase transition is not directly accessible in a bulk experiment because it is expected to occur in "no-man's" region below the kinetic stability limit of the liquid phase at about 235 K, the temperature of homogeneous ice formation. Therefore, verifications of this hypothesis are usually based on extrapolations from the experimentally accessible region. In th…
Liquid polymorphism is an intriguing phenomenon which has been found in a few single-component systems, the most famous being water. By supercooling liquid Te to more than 130 K below its melting point and performing simultaneous small-angle and wide-angle X-ray scattering measurements, we observe clear maxima in its thermodynamic response functions around 615 K, suggesting the possible existence of liquid polymorphism. A close look at the underlying structural evolution shows the development of intermediate-range order upon cooling, most strongly around the thermodynamic maxima, which we attr…
A key feature of the crystallization of supercooled water confined in an applied static electric field is that the structural order here is determined not only by usual thermodynamic and kinematic factors (degree of supercooling, difference between chemical potentials for a liquid and a crystal, and viscosity) but also by the strength and direction of the applied electric field, size of a system (size effects), and the geometry of bounding surfaces. In this work, the electrocrystallization of supercooled water confined between ideally flat parallel graphene sheets at a temperature of $T=268$~K…
The viscosity of supercooled water has been a subject of intense study, in particular with respect to its temperature dependence. Much less is known, however, about the influence of dynamical effects on the viscosity in its supercooled state. Here we address this issue for the first time, using molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the shear-rate dependence of the viscosity of supercooled water as described by the TIP4P/Ice model. We show the existence of a distinct cross-over from Newtonian to non-Newtonian behavior characterized by a power-law shear-thinning regime. The viscosity red…
Aqueous lithium chloride solutions up to very high concentrations were investigated in classical molecular dynamics simulations. Various force fields based on the 12-6 Lennard-Jones model, parametrized for non-polarizable water solvent molecules (SPC/E, TIP4P, TIP4PEw), were inspected. Twenty-nine combinations of ion-water interaction models were examined at four different salt concentrations. Densities, static dielectric constants and self-diffusion coefficients were calculated. Results derived from the different force fields scatter over a wide range of values. Neutron and X-ray weighted str…
Solutions of LiCl and of NaCl in ultrapure water were studied through Rayleigh/Brillouin scattering as a function of the concentration (molarity, M) of dissolved salt from 0.2M to extremely low concentration (2.10^-17 M ). The Landau-Placzek ratio, R/B, of the Rayleigh scattering intensity over the total Brillouin, was measured thanks to the dynamically controlled stability of the used Fabry-Perot interferometer. It was observed that the R/B ratio follows two stages as a function of increasing dilution rate: after a strong decrease between 0.2M and 2.10^-5 M, it increases to reach a maximum be…
Nanofluidics is an emerging field offering innovative solutions for energy harvesting and desalination. The efficiency of these applications depends strongly on liquid-solid slip, arising from a favorable ratio between viscosity and interfacial friction. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we show that wall slip increases strongly when water is cooled below its melting point. For water on graphene, the slip length is multiplied by up to a factor of five and reaches $230$nm at the lowest simulated temperature, $T \sim 225$K; experiments in nanopores can reach much lower temperatures and could…
Molecular Dynamics simulations are performed on two sodium chloride solutions in TIP4P water with concentrations c=1.36 mol/kg and c=2.10 mol/kg upon supercooling. The isotherms and isochoresplanes are calculated. The temperature of maximum density line and the limit of mechanical stability line are obtained from the analysis of the thermodynamic planes. The comparison of the results shows that for densities well above the limit of mechanical stability, the isotherms and isochores of the sodium chloride aqueous solution shift to lower pressures upon increasing concentration while the limit of …
The violation of Stokes--Einstein (SE) relation $D\sim (η/T)^{-1}$ between the shear viscosity $η$ and the translational diffusion constant $D$ at temperature $T$ is of great importance for characterizing anomalous dynamics of supercooled water. Determining which time scales play key roles in the SE violation remains elusive without the measurement of $η$. Here we provide comprehensive simulation results of the dynamic properties involving $η$ and $D$ in TIP4P/2005 supercooled water. This enabled the thorough identification of the appropriate time scales for SE relation $Dη/T$. In particular, …
Why does a microwave oven work? How does biological tissue absorb electromagnetic radiation? Astonishingly, we do not have a definite answer to these simple questions because the microscopic processes governing the absorption of electromagnetic waves by water are largely unclarified. This absorption can be quantified by dielectric loss spectra, which reveal a huge peak at a frequency of the exciting electric field of about 20 GHz and a gradual tailing off towards higher frequencies. The microscopic interpretation of such spectra is highly controversial and various superpositions of relaxation …
The interaction between water and ions within droplets plays a key role in the chemical reactivity of atmospheric and man-made aerosols. Here we report direct computational evidence that in supercooled aqueous nanodroplets a lower density core of tetrahedrally coordinated water expels the cosmotropic ions to the denser and more disordered subsurface. In contrast, at room temperature, depending on the nature of the ion the radial distribution in the droplet core is nearly uniform or elevated towards the center. We analyze the spatial distribution of a single ion in terms of a reference electros…
The effect of fluid flow on crystal nucleation in supercooled liquids is not well understood. The variable density and temperature gradients in the liquid make it difficult to study this under terrestrial gravity conditions. Nucleation experiments were therefore made in a microgravity environment using the Electromagnetic Levitation facility on the International Space Station on a bulk glass-forming Zr57Cu15.4Ni12.6Al10Nb5 (Vit106), as well as Cu50Zr50 and the quasicrystal-forming Ti39.5Zr39.5Ni21 liquids. The maximum supercooling temperatures for each alloy were measured as a function of cont…
Dissociation Line and Driving Force for Nucleation of the Multiple Occupied Hydrogen Hydrate from Computer Simulation
Laboratorio de Simulación Molecular y Química Computacional, CIQSO-Centro de Investigación en Química Sostenible and Departamento de Ciencias Integradas, Universidad de Huelva（韦尔瓦大学综合科学系与可持续化学研究中心分子模拟与计算化学实验室）；Dpto. Química Física I, Fac. Ciencias Químicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid（马德里康普顿斯大学化学学院物理化学第一系）；Departamento de Ingeniería Química Industrial y del Medio Ambiente, Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid（马德里理工大学高等工业工程学院工业与环境化学工程系）
