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Updated: Apr 23, 2026

A Microfluidic Approach for the Study of Ice and Clathrate Hydrate Crystallization
Published on: August 18, 2022
Communication: Thermodynamics of stacking disorder in ice nuclei
1Department of Physics and Centre for Scientific Computing, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
A simple Ising-like model for the stacking thermodynamics of ice 1 is constructed for nuclei in supercooled water, and combined with classical nucleation theory. For relative stabilities of cubic and hexagonal ice I within the range of experimental estimates, this predicts critical nuclei are stacking disordered at strong sub-cooling, consistent with recent experiments. At higher temperatures nucleation of pure hexagonal ice is recovered. Lattice-switching Monte-Carlo is applied to accurately compute the relative stability of cubic and hexagonal ice for the popular mW model of water. Results demonstrate that this model fails to adequately capture the relative energetics of the two polytypes, leading to stacking disorder at all temperatures.
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