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Cascade Freezing of Supercooled Water Droplet Collectives
- Source :
- ACS Nano, ACS Nano, 12 (11)
- Publication Year :
- 2018
- Publisher :
- American Chemical Society (ACS), 2018.
-
Abstract
- Surface icing affects the safety and performance of numerous processes in technology. Previous studies mostly investigated freezing of individual droplets. The interaction among multiple droplets during freezing is investigated less, especially on nanotextured icephobic surfaces, despite its practical importance as water droplets never appear in isolation, but in groups. Here we show that freezing of a supercooled droplet leads to spontaneous self-heating and induces strong vaporization. The resulting, rapidly propagating vapor front causes immediate cascading freezing of neighboring supercooled droplets upon reaching them. We put forth the explanation that, as the vapor approaches cold neighboring droplets, it can lead to local supersaturation and formation of airborne microscopic ice crystals, which act as freezing nucleation sites. The sequential triggering and propagation of this mechanism results in the rapid freezing of an entire droplet ensemble, resulting in ice coverage of the nanotextured surface. Although cascade freezing is observed in a low-pressure environment, it introduces an unexpected pathway of freezing propagation that can be crucial for the performance of rationally designed icephobic surfaces.
- Subjects :
- endocrine system
Materials science
Nucleation
FOS: Physical sciences
General Physics and Astronomy
02 engineering and technology
Condensed Matter - Soft Condensed Matter
010402 general chemistry
complex mixtures
01 natural sciences
recalescence freezing
vaporization
icephobicity
nanotexture
superhydrophobicity
phase change
Vaporization
General Materials Science
Supercooling
Physics::Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
Icing
Supersaturation
Ice crystals
Lead (sea ice)
Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn)
technology, industry, and agriculture
General Engineering
Physics - Fluid Dynamics
021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology
eye diseases
0104 chemical sciences
13. Climate action
Chemical physics
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
Icephobicity
0210 nano-technology
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 1936086X and 19360851
- Volume :
- 12
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- ACS Nano
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....e7b83e42ae5574118be758403eeb4340