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Supercooled


Supercooling, also known as undercooling, is the process of lowering the temperature of a liquid or a gas below its freezing point without it becoming a solid.

A liquid crossing its standard freezing point will crystalize in the presence of a seed crystal or nucleus around which a crystal structure can form creating a solid. Lacking any such nuclei, the liquid phase can be maintained all the way down to the temperature at which crystal homogeneous nucleation occurs. Homogeneous nucleation can occur above the glass transition temperature, but if homogeneous nucleation has not occurred above that temperature, an amorphous (non-crystalline) solid will form.

Water normally freezes at 273.15 K (0 °C or 32 °F), but it can be "supercooled" at standard pressure down to its crystal homogeneous nucleation at almost 224.8 K (−48.3 °C/−55 °F). The process of supercooling requires that water be pure and free of nucleation sites, which can be achieved by processes like reverse osmosis or chemical demineralization, but the cooling itself does not require any specialised technique. If water is cooled at a rate on the order of 106 K/s, the crystal nucleation can be avoided and water becomes a glass — that is, an amorphous (non-crystalline) solid. Its glass transition temperature is much colder and harder to determine, but studies estimate it at about 136 K (−137 °C/-215 °F).Glassy water can be heated up to approximately 150 K (−123 °C/−189.4 °F) without nucleation occurring. In the range of temperatures between 231 K (−42 °C/−43.6 °F) and 150 K (−123 °C/−189.4 °F), experiments find only crystal ice.


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