A Fully Size-Resolved Perspective on the Crystallization of Water Clusters

Abstract

Minimal Ice Water clusters comprising fewer than 100 molecules have long been studied in gas phase to model the more complex structures of ice and liquid water. At some stage, as clusters grow larger, they effectively become tiny crystals of ice, but it has been hard to pinpoint precisely where in the range between 100 and 1000 molecules the formal transition takes place. Pradzynski et al. (p. 1529 ) used vibrational spectroscopy to show that the onset of an icelike structure, indicated by a characteristically distinct absorption band in the infrared, occurs at a cluster size of approximately 275 molecules.