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Updated: Jun 18, 2025

A Microfluidic Approach for the Study of Ice and Clathrate Hydrate Crystallization
Published on: August 18, 2022
Theoretical Studies of Anisotropic Melting of Ice Induced by Ultrafast Nonthermal Heating
Ibrahim Dawod1,2, Kajwal Patra1, Sebastian Cardoch1
1Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Box 516, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden.
Abstract:
Water and ice are routinely studied with X-rays to reveal their diverse structures and anomalous properties. We employ a hybrid collisional-radiative/molecular-dynamics method to explore how femtosecond X-ray pulses interact with hexagonal ice. We find that ice makes a phase transition into a crystalline plasma where its initial structure is maintained up to tens of femtoseconds. The ultrafast melting process occurs anisotropically, where different geometric configurations of the structure melt on different time scales. The transient state and anisotropic melting of crystals can be captured by X-ray diffraction, which impacts any study of crystalline structures probed by femtosecond X-ray lasers.
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