Viscosity of deeply supercooled water and its coupling to molecular diffusion

Abstract

The viscosity of a liquid measures its resistance to flow, with consequences for hydraulic machinery, locomotion of microorganisms, and flow of blood in vessels and sap in trees. Viscosity increases dramatically upon cooling, until dynamical arrest when a glassy state is reached. Water is a notoriously poor glassformer, and the supercooled liquid crystallizes easily, making the measurement of its viscosity a challenging task. Here we report viscosity of water supercooled close to the limit of homogeneous crystallization. Our values contradict earlier data. A single power law reproduces the 50-fold variation of viscosity up to the boiling point. Our results allow us to test the Stokes–Einstein and Stokes–Einstein–Debye relations that link viscosity, a macroscopic property, to the molecular translational and rotational diffusion, respectively. In molecular glassformers or liquid metals, the violation of the Stokes–Einstein relation signals the onset of spatially heterogeneous dynamics and collective motions. Although the viscosity of water strongly decouples from translational motion, a scaling with rotational motion remains, similar to canonical glassformers.