Ice-Amorphization of Supercooled Water Nanodroplets in No Man’s Land

Abstract

Elucidating freezing mechanisms of liquid water into ice, especially in “No Man’s Land” (150 K< T < 235 K), carries scientific and technological importance. Indeed, superior predictions of upper-troposphere cirrus-cloud formation and surface-bound ice-fog formation constitute powerful motivations in addition to unravelling long-standing puzzles such as persistent liquid fogs well below frost point and understanding interstellar-space water states, together with advancing cryopreservation technology. Unlocking the secrets of water’s anomalous deep-cooling complexities, such as structural ordering and microscopic nucleation mechanisms, are the subject of lively debate. Exploring nucleation mechanism in No Man’s Land (NML) is technically demanding, owing to rapid nucleation rates with, unsurprisingly, very few reported experimental studies. However, amorphization is a key intermediate stage in NML-based nucleation, and it is also not particularly well understood. In this microsecond long molecular dynamics s...