The freezing of water is one of the major causes of mechanical damage in materials during wintertime; surprisingly this happens even in situations where water only partially saturates the material so that the ice has room to grow. Here we perform freezing experiments in cylindrical glass vials of various sizes and wettability properties, using a dye that exclusively colors the liquid phase; this allows to precisely observe the freezing front. The visualization reveals that damage occurs in partially water-saturated media when a closed liquid inclusion forms within the ice due to the freezing of air/water meniscus. When this water inclusion subsequently freezes, the volume expansion leads to very high pressures leading to the fracture of both the surrounding ice and the glass vial. The pressure can be understood quantitatively based on thermodynamics which correctly predicts that the crystallization pressure is independent of the volume of the liquid pocket. Finally, our results also reveal that by changing the wetting properties of the confining walls, the formation of the liquid pockets that cause the mechanical damage can be avoided.
Emergent charge crystallization and frustration in a particle anti-spin Ice
Universitat de Barcelona（巴塞罗那大学）；Institute of Complex Systems (UBICS), Universitat de Barcelona（巴塞罗那大学复杂系统研究所）；Theoretical Division, Center for NonLinear Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratory（洛斯阿拉莫斯国家实验室非线性研究理论部）
Liquid-liquid phase separation precedes crystallization in supercooled water-glycerol solutions
Stockholm University（斯德哥尔摩大学）；Saint Petersburg State University（圣彼得堡国立大学）；Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY（德国电子同步加速器中心）；Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg（弗莱贝格矿业科技大学）；ESRF – The European Synchrotron（欧洲同步辐射装置）
Computational investigation of structure, dynamics and nucleation kinetics of a family of modified Stillinger-Weber model fluids in bulk and free-standing thin films
Confinement effects on protein stability in a freezing water environment
University of Pamplona（潘普洛纳大学）；Instituto de Física de Líquidos y Sistemas Biológicos (CONICET-UNLP)（液体与生物系统物理研究所 (CONICET-UNLP)）；Universidad Nacional Arturo Jauretche（阿图罗·豪雷切国立大学）；Universidad Nacional de La Plata（拉普拉塔国立大学）；Universidad Tecnológica Nacional, Facultad Regional La Plata（国家技术大学，拉普拉塔地区学院）
