New Nanostructure in a Metastable Ice Phase

YB Dai and XF Xu, JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY C, 122, 15729-15732 (2018).

DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.8b03233

Hydrogen bonds between water molecules can form a polygonal structure, which determine the physical properties of different ice phases. Pure pentagonal rings are not stable in crystal ice. In this work, we discover a new nanostructure of ice in heterogeneous nucleation on metal surfaces by molecular dynamic simulation. In this nanostructure, pentagonal rings are connected by dodecahedrons and staggered hydrogen bonds. The presence of dodecahedrons could help the stability of ice structure with pentagons. This nanostructure serves as a skeleton unit in ice. Our results provide a new explanation for the existence of pentagonal rings in ice, which are helpful to understand the complex ice phase behaviors.

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