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Updated: Oct 4, 2025

Ice Generation and the Heat and Mass Transfer Phenomena of Introducing Water to a Cold Bath of Brine
Published on: March 13, 2017
Scratch-Healing Behavior of Ice by Local Sublimation and Condensation
Menno Demmenie1,2, Paul Kolpakov1, Yuki Nagata3
1Institute of Physics, University of Amsterdam, Science Park 904, 1098 XH Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Abstract:
We show that the surface of ice is scratch healing: micrometer-deep scratches in the ice surface spontaneously disappear by thermal relaxation on the time scale of roughly an hour. Following the dynamics and comparing it to different mass transfer mechanisms, we find that sublimation from and condensation onto the ice surface is the dominant scratch-healing mechanism. The scratch-healing kinetics shows a strong temperature dependence, following an Arrhenius behavior with an activation energy of ΔE = 58.6 ± 4.6 kJ/mol, agreeing with the proposed sublimation mechanism and at odds with surface diffusion or fluid flow or evaporation-condensation from a quasi-liquid layer.
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