Researcher pushes limit of when water will freezeThough it is one of the great mysteries of science,
Researcher pushes limit of when water will freezeThough it is one of the great mysteries of science, the transformation of water into ice often escapes people’s minds as it is just assumed that’s what happens. But how and why it happens is the subject of intense scrutiny by ice scientists like Hadi Ghasemi, Cullen Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Houston. In order to watch the process of crystallization of water into ice at the molecular level, Ghasemi is reporting the best look yet at the process: water-ice phase transformation down to 2 nm (nanometers) in diameter.Then when Ghasemi examined these tiny particles, he made another discovery. He could break the limit of when water freezes and maintain the tiny droplets as liquid by putting them in contact with soft interfaces, like gels or lipids. “We found that if a water droplet is in contact with a soft interface, freezing temperature could be significantly lower than hard surfaces. Also, a few-nanometer water droplet could avoid freezing down to -44 C if it is in contact with a soft interface,” Ghasemi reports in Nature Communications. Read more. -- source link
#materials science#science#phase transitions#freezing#nanotechnology