A direct optical method for the study of grain boundary melting

Thomson, Erik S.; Wettlaufer, J. S.; Wilen, Larry

doi:10.1063/1.3249562

Cited by 9 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 27 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Interfaces between individual ice crystals are referred to as grain boundaries, and grain boundaries are involved in many processes in nature [3] (throughout this paper, the term grain boundary does not include the ice-air interface). The properties of ice grain boundaries are unknown to a large extent, much due to the difficulty in investigating a grain boundary at thermodynamic equilibrium [3], [4]. It is for example uncertain to what extent grain boundaries affect the structure of ice surfaces in their vicinity [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Surface Transition on Ice Induced by the Formation of a Grain Boundary

2011

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Interfaces between individual ice crystals, usually referred to as grain boundaries, play an important part in many processes in nature. Grain boundary properties are, for example, governing the sintering processes in snow and ice which transform a snowpack into a glacier. In the case of snow sintering, it has been assumed that there are no variations in surface roughness and surface melting, when considering the ice-air interface of an individual crystal. In contrast to that assumption, the present work suggests that there is an increased probability of molecular surface disorder in the vicinity of a grain boundary. The conclusion is based on the first detailed visualization of the formation of an ice grain boundary. The visualization is enabled by studying ice crystals growing into contact, at temperatures between −20°C and −15°C and pressures of 1–2 Torr, using Environmental Scanning Electron Microscopy. It is observed that the formation of a grain boundary induces a surface transition on the facets in contact. The transition does not propagate across facet edges. The surface transition is interpreted as the spreading of crystal dislocations away from the grain boundary. The observation constitutes a qualitatively new finding, and can potentially increase the understanding of specific processes in nature where ice grain boundaries are involved.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Surface Transition on Ice Induced by the Formation of a Grain Boundary

2011

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The experiments of Faraday (1850), more than two centuries later, focused on the question of how two blocks of ice put into contact freeze together. Such a process had been interpreted using the familiar concept of pressure melting (Thomson, 1861), which is commonly put forward in order to explain why ice is slippery. Pressure melting arises because water has a higher density than ice as reflected in the negative slope of the solid-liquid boundary in the phase diagram.…”

Section: Interfacial Premelting Of Icementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Colors represent different grain boundary orientations determined from an independent measurement via polarimetry and a Schmidt plot as described in Thomson et al (2009a). The orange and red data correspond to the grain boundaries with the largest lattice mismatch, and hence the largest magnitude of interfacial disorder at contact in the limit of zero impurity concentration.…”

Section: Figmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

On the edge of habitability and the extremes of liquidity

Hansen-Goos

Thomson

Wettlaufer

2014

Planetary and Space Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Third, the results are of immediate relevance to geophysical phenomena. In order to probe the grain boundary between two ice crystals a light scattering apparatus was constructed to nucleate ice bicrystals, control their growth and to expose them to varying levels of ions using dissolved salt [13]. As thermodynamic parameters are varied, laser light is re-flected from a single grain boundary and the intensity of the reflected signal is interpreted using a theory that incorporates the optical anisotropy of the bounding crystals [14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grain boundary melting in ice

Thomson

Hansen-Goos

Wettlaufer

et al. 2013

The Journal of Chemical Physics

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We describe an optical scattering study of grain boundary premelting in water ice. Ubiquitous long ranged attractive polarization forces act to suppress grain boundary melting whereas repulsive forces originating in screened Coulomb interactions and classical colligative effects enhance it. The liquid enhancing effects can be manipulated by adding dopant ions to the system. For all measured grain boundaries this leads to increasing premelted film thickness with increasing electrolyte concentration. Although we understand that the interfacial surface charge densities qs and solute concentrations can potentially dominate the film thickness, we can not directly measure them within a given grain boundary. Therefore, as a framework for interpreting the data we consider two appropriate qs dependent limits; one is dominated by the colligative effect and one is dominated by electrostatic interactions.

show abstract

A direct optical method for the study of grain boundary melting

Cited by 9 publications

References 27 publications

Surface Transition on Ice Induced by the Formation of a Grain Boundary

Surface Transition on Ice Induced by the Formation of a Grain Boundary

On the edge of habitability and the extremes of liquidity

Grain boundary melting in ice

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About