Ice is water that is frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 32 °F, 0 °C, or 273.15 K. As a naturally occurring crystalline inorganic solid with an ordered structure, ice is considered to be a mineral. Depending on the presence of impurities such as particles of soil or bubbles of air, it can appear transparent or a more or less opaque bluish-white color.
In chemistry, carbonic acid is an organic compound with the chemical formula H2CO3. The molecule rapidly converts to water and carbon dioxide in the presence of water. However, in the absence of water, it is quite stable at room temperature. The interconversion of carbon dioxide and carbonic acid is related to the breathing cycle of animals and the acidification of natural waters.
Metallic hydrogen is a phase of hydrogen in which it behaves like an electrical conductor. This phase was predicted in 1935 on theoretical grounds by Eugene Wigner and Hillard Bell Huntington.
Ice Ih is the hexagonal crystal form of ordinary ice, or frozen water. Virtually all ice in the biosphere is ice Ih, with the exception only of a small amount of ice Ic that is occasionally present in the upper atmosphere. Ice Ih exhibits many peculiar properties that are relevant to the existence of life and regulation of global climate. For a description of these properties, see Ice, which deals primarily with ice Ih.
In physics, an entropic force acting in a system is an emergent phenomenon resulting from the entire system's statistical tendency to increase its entropy, rather than from a particular underlying force on the atomic scale.
Amorphous ice is an amorphous solid form of water. Common ice is a crystalline material wherein the molecules are regularly arranged in a hexagonal lattice, whereas amorphous ice lacks long-range order in its molecular arrangement. Amorphous ice is produced either by rapid cooling of liquid water, or by compressing ordinary ice at low temperatures.
A spin ice is a magnetic substance that does not have a single minimal-energy state. It has magnetic moments (i.e. "spin") as elementary degrees of freedom which are subject to frustrated interactions. By their nature, these interactions prevent the moments from exhibiting a periodic pattern in their orientation down to a temperature much below the energy scale set by the said interactions. Spin ices show low-temperature properties, residual entropy in particular, closely related to those of common crystalline water ice. The most prominent compounds with such properties are dysprosium titanate (Dy2Ti2O7) and holmium titanate (Ho2Ti2O7). The orientation of the magnetic moments in spin ice resembles the positional organization of hydrogen atoms (more accurately, ionized hydrogen, or protons) in conventional water ice (see figure 1).
Ice Ic is a metastable cubic crystalline variant of ice. Hans König was the first to identify and deduce the structure of ice Ic. The oxygen atoms in ice Ic are arranged in a diamond structure and is extremely similar to ice Ih having nearly identical densities and the same lattice constant along the hexagonal puckered-planes. It forms at temperatures between 130 and 220 kelvins upon cooling, and can exist up to 240 K (−33 °C) upon warming, when it transforms into ice Ih.
Ice XI is the hydrogen-ordered form of Ih, the ordinary form of ice. Different phases of ice, from ice II to ice XIX, have been created in the laboratory at different temperatures and pressures. The total internal energy of ice XI is about one sixth lower than ice Ih, so in principle it should naturally form when ice Ih is cooled to below 72 K. The low temperature required to achieve this transition is correlated with the relatively low energy difference between the two structures. Water molecules in ice Ih are surrounded by four semi-randomly directed hydrogen bonds. Such arrangements should change to the more ordered arrangement of hydrogen bonds found in ice XI at low temperatures, so long as localized proton hopping is sufficiently enabled; a process that becomes easier with increasing pressure. Correspondingly, ice XI is believed to have a triple point with hexagonal ice and gaseous water at.
Ice VII is a cubic crystalline form of ice. It can be formed from liquid water above 3 GPa (30,000 atmospheres) by lowering its temperature to room temperature, or by decompressing heavy water (D2O) ice VI below 95 K. (Different types of ice, from ice II to ice XVIII, have been created in the laboratory at different temperatures and pressures. Ordinary water ice is known as ice Ih in the Bridgman nomenclature.) Ice VII is metastable over a wide range of temperatures and pressures and transforms into low-density amorphous ice (LDA) above 120 K (−153 °C). Ice VII has a triple point with liquid water and ice VI at 355 K and 2.216 GPa, with the melt line extending to at least 715 K (442 °C) and 10 GPa. Ice VII can be formed within nanoseconds by rapid compression via shock-waves. It can also be created by increasing the pressure on ice VI at ambient temperature. At around 5 GPa, Ice VII becomes the tetragonal Ice VIIt.
Ice II is a rhombohedral crystalline form of ice with a highly ordered structure. It is formed from ice Ih by compressing it at a temperature of 198 K at 300 MPa or by decompressing ice V. When heated it undergoes transformation to ice III. Ordinary water ice is known as ice Ih,. Different types of ice, from ice II to ice XIX, have been created in the laboratory at different temperatures and pressures. It is thought that the cores of icy moons like Jupiter's Ganymede may be made of ice II.
Ice VI is a form of ice that exists at high pressure at the order of about 1 GPa and temperatures ranging from 130 up to 355 Kelvin ; see also the phase diagram of water. Its discovery and the discovery of other high-pressure forms of water were published by P.W. Bridgman in January 1912.
Ice XV is a crystalline form of ice, a partially proton-ordered form of ice VI. It is created by cooling hydrochloric-acid-doped ice VI to around 130 K at 1 GPa.
In statistical mechanics, the ice-type models or six-vertex models are a family of vertex models for crystal lattices with hydrogen bonds. The first such model was introduced by Linus Pauling in 1935 to account for the residual entropy of water ice. Variants have been proposed as models of certain ferroelectric and antiferroelectric crystals.
In chemistry, ice rules are basic principles that govern arrangement of atoms in water ice. They are also known as Bernal–Fowler rules, after British physicists John Desmond Bernal and Ralph H. Fowler who first described them in 1933.
Ice XVI is the least dense experimentally obtained crystalline form of ice. It is topologically equivalent to the empty structure of sII clathrate hydrates. It was first obtained in 2014 by removing gas molecules from a neon clathrate under vacuum at temperatures below 147 K. The resulting empty water frame, ice XVI, is thermodynamically unstable at the experimental conditions, yet it can be preserved at cryogenic temperatures. Above 145–147 K at positive pressures ice XVI transforms into the stacking-faulty ice Ic and further into ordinary ice Ih. Theoretical studies predict ice XVI to be thermodynamically stable at negative pressures.
Ice XIX is a proposed crystalline phase of water. Along with ice XV, it is one of two phases of ice directly related to ice VI. Ice XIX is prepared by cooling HCl-doped ice VI at a pressure above 1.6 GPa down to about 100 K. As of 2022, its crystal structure has not been elucidated.
Ice IV is a metastable high-pressure phase of ice. It is formed when liquid water is compressed with an immense force.
Ice XVII is a metastable form of ice with a hexagonal structure and helical channels that was discovered in 2016. It can be formed by freezing water with hydrogen molecules at high pressure to form a filled ice, and then removing the hydrogen molecules from the structure. The form has potential for being used in hydrogen storage. Ice XVII made from heavy water can also be reduced to pure cubic ice.
Thomas Loerting is an Austrian chemist and associate professor at the University of Innsbruck. His research focuses on amorphous systems, the physics and chemistry of ice and chemistry at low temperatures.
