Daniel Schlesinger

Ultrafast X-ray probing of water structure below the homogeneous ice nucleation temperature

Water has a number of anomalous physical properties, and some of these become drastically enhanced on supercooling below the freezing point. Particular interest has focused on thermodynamic response functions that can be described using a normal component and an anomalous component that seems to diverge at about 228 kelvin (refs 1,2,3 ). This has prompted debate about conflicting theories that aim to explain many of the anomalous thermodynamic properties of water. One popular theory attributes the divergence to a phase transition between two forms of liquid water occurring in the ‘no man’s land’ that lies below the homogeneous ice nucleation temperature (TH) at approximately 232 kelvin and above about 160 kelvin, and where rapid ice crystallization has prevented any measurements of the bulk liquid phase. In fact, the reliable determination of the structure of liquid water typically requires temperatures above about 250 kelvin. Water crystallization has been inhibited by using nanoconfinement, nanodroplets and association with biomolecules to give liquid samples at temperatures below TH, but such measurements rely on nanoscopic volumes of water where the interaction with the confining surfaces makes the relevance to bulk water unclear. Here we demonstrate that femtosecond X-ray laser pulses can be used to probe the structure of liquid water in micrometre-sized droplets that have been evaporatively cooled below TH. We find experimental evidence for the existence of metastable bulk liquid water down to temperatures of  kelvin in the previously largely unexplored no man’s land. We observe a continuous and accelerating increase in structural ordering on supercooling to approximately 229 kelvin, where the number of droplets containing ice crystals increases rapidly. But a few droplets remain liquid for about a millisecond even at this temperature. The hope now is that these observations and our detailed structural data will help identify those theories that best describe and explain the behaviour of water.

Benchmark oxygen-oxygen pair-distribution function of ambient water from x-ray diffraction measurements with a wide Q-range

Four recent x-ray diffraction measurements of ambient liquid water are reviewed here. Each of these measurements represents a significant development of the x-ray diffraction technique applied to the study of liquid water. Sources of uncertainty from statistical noise, Q-range, Compton scattering, and self-scattering are discussed. The oxygen-hydrogen contribution to the measured x-ray scattering pattern was subtracted using literature data to yield an experimental determination, with error bars, of the oxygen-oxygen pair-distribution function, g(OO)(r), which essentially describes the distribution of molecular centers. The extended Q-range and low statistical noise of these measurements has significantly reduced truncation effects and related errors in the g(OO)(r) functions obtained. From these measurements and error analysis, the position and height of the nearest neighbor maximum in g(OO)(r) were found to be 2.80(1) Å and 2.57(5) respectively. Numerical data for the coherent differential x-ray scattering cross-section I(X)(Q), the oxygen-oxygen structure factor S(OO)(Q), and the derived g(OO)(r) are provided as benchmarks for calibrating force-fields for water.

Anomalous Behavior of the Homogeneous Ice Nucleation Rate in “No-Man’s Land”

We present an analysis of ice nucleation kinetics from near-ambient pressure water as temperature decreases below the homogeneous limit TH by cooling micrometer-sized droplets (microdroplets) evaporatively at 103–104 K/s and probing the structure ultrafast using femtosecond pulses from the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) free-electron X-ray laser. Below 232 K, we observed a slower nucleation rate increase with decreasing temperature than anticipated from previous measurements, which we suggest is due to the rapid decrease in water’s diffusivity. This is consistent with earlier findings that microdroplets do not crystallize at <227 K, but vitrify at cooling rates of 106–107 K/s. We also hypothesize that the slower increase in the nucleation rate is connected with the proposed “fragile-to-strong” transition anomaly in water.

A different view of structure-making and structure-breaking in alkali halide aqueous solutions through x-ray absorption spectroscopy

X-ray absorption spectroscopy measured in transmission mode was used to study the effect of alkali and halide ions on the hydrogen-bonding (H-bonding) network of water. Cl(-) and Br(-) are shown to have insignificant effect on the structure of water while I(-) locally weakens the H-bonding, as indicated by a sharp increase of the main-edge feature in the x-ray absorption spectra. All alkali cations act as structure-breakers in water, weakening the H-bonding network. The spectral changes are similar to spectra of high density ices where the 2nd shell has collapsed due to a break-down of the tetrahedral structures, although here, around the ions, the breakdown of the local tetrahedrality is rather due to non-directional H-bonding to the larger anions. In addition, results from temperature-dependent x-ray Raman scattering measurements of NaCl solution confirm the H-bond breaking effect of Na(+) and the effect on the liquid as similar to an increase in temperature.

X-ray and Neutron Scattering of Water

This review article focuses on the most recent advances in X-ray and neutron scattering studies of water structure, from ambient temperature to the deeply supercooled and amorphous states, and of water diffusive and collective dynamics, in disparate thermodynamic conditions and environments. In particular, the ability to measure X-ray and neutron diffraction of water with unprecedented high accuracy in an extended range of momentum transfers has allowed the derivation of detailed O-O pair correlation functions. A panorama of the diffusive dynamics of water in a wide range of temperatures (from 400 K down to supercooled water) and pressures (from ambient up to multiple gigapascals) is presented. The recent results obtained by quasi-elastic neutron scattering under high pressure are compared with the existing data from nuclear magnetic resonance, dielectric and infrared measurements, and modeling. A detailed description of the vibrational dynamics of water as measured by inelastic neutron scattering is presented. The dependence of the water vibrational density of states on temperature and pressure, and in the presence of biological molecules, is discussed. Results about the collective dynamics of water and its dispersion curves as measured by coherent inelastic neutron scattering and inelastic X-ray scattering in different thermodynamic conditions are reported.

The Boson peak in supercooled water

We perform extensive molecular dynamics simulations of the TIP4P/2005 model of water to investigate the origin of the Boson peak reported in experiments on supercooled water in nanoconfined pores, and in hydration water around proteins. We find that the onset of the Boson peak in supercooled bulk water coincides with the crossover to a predominantly low-density-like liquid below the Widom line TW. The frequency and onset temperature of the Boson peak in our simulations of bulk water agree well with the results from experiments on nanoconfined water. Our results suggest that the Boson peak in water is not an exclusive effect of confinement. We further find that, similar to other glass-forming liquids, the vibrational modes corresponding to the Boson peak are spatially extended and are related to transverse phonons found in the parent crystal, here ice Ih.

Microscopic probing of the size dependence in hydrophobic solvation

We report small angle x-ray scattering data demonstrating the direct experimental microscopic observation of the small-to-large crossover behavior of hydrophobic effects in hydrophobic solvation. By increasing the side chain length of amphiphilic tetraalkyl-ammonium (C(n)H(2n+1))(4)N(+) (R(4)N(+)) cations in aqueous solution we observe diffraction peaks indicating association between cations at a solute size between 4.4 and 5 Å, which show temperature dependence dominated by hydrophobic attraction. Using O K-edge x-ray absorption we show that small solutes affect hydrogen bonding in water similar to a temperature decrease, while large solutes affect water similar to a temperature increase. Molecular dynamics simulations support, and provide further insight into, the origin of the experimental observations.

Diffusive dynamics during the high-to-low density transition in amorphous ice

Significance The importance of a molecular-level understanding of the properties, structure, and dynamics of liquid water is recognized in many scientific fields. It has been debated whether the observed high- and low-density amorphous ice forms are related to two distinct liquid forms. Here, we study experimentally the structure and dynamics of high-density amorphous ice as it relaxes into the low-density form. The unique aspect of this work is the combination of two X-ray methods, where wide-angle X-ray scattering provides the evidence for the structure at the atomic level and X-ray photon-correlation spectroscopy provides insight about the motion at the nanoscale, respectively. The observed motion appears diffusive, indicating liquid-like dynamics during the relaxation from the high-to low-density form. Water exists in high- and low-density amorphous ice forms (HDA and LDA), which could correspond to the glassy states of high- (HDL) and low-density liquid (LDL) in the metastable part of the phase diagram. However, the nature of both the glass transition and the high-to-low-density transition are debated and new experimental evidence is needed. Here we combine wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS) with X-ray photon-correlation spectroscopy (XPCS) in the small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) geometry to probe both the structural and dynamical properties during the high-to-low-density transition in amorphous ice at 1 bar. By analyzing the structure factor and the radial distribution function, the coexistence of two structurally distinct domains is observed at T = 125 K. XPCS probes the dynamics in momentum space, which in the SAXS geometry reflects structural relaxation on the nanometer length scale. The dynamics of HDA are characterized by a slow component with a large time constant, arising from viscoelastic relaxation and stress release from nanometer-sized heterogeneities. Above 110 K a faster, strongly temperature-dependent component appears, with momentum transfer dependence pointing toward nanoscale diffusion. This dynamical component slows down after transition into the low-density form at 130 K, but remains diffusive. The diffusive character of both the high- and low-density forms is discussed among different interpretations and the results are most consistent with the hypothesis of a liquid–liquid transition in the ultraviscous regime.

Highly Compressed Two-Dimensional Form of Water at Ambient Conditions

The structure of thin-film water on a BaF2(111) surface under ambient conditions was studied using x-ray absorption spectroscopy from ambient to supercooled temperatures at relative humidity up to 95%. No hexagonal ice-like structure was observed in spite of the expected templating effect of the lattice-matched (111) surface. The oxygen K-edge x-ray absorption spectrum of liquid thin-film water on BaF2 exhibits, at all temperatures, a strong resemblance to that of high-density phases for which the observed spectroscopic features correlate linearly with the density. Surprisingly, the highly compressed, high-density thin-film liquid water is found to be stable from ambient (300 K) to supercooled (259 K) temperatures, although a lower-density liquid would be expected at supercooled conditions. Molecular dynamics simulations indicate that the first layer water on BaF2(111) is indeed in a unique local structure that resembles high-density water, with a strongly collapsed second coordination shell.

The structural validity of various thermodynamical models of supercooled water.

The thermodynamic response functions of water exhibit an anomalous increase upon cooling that becomes strongly amplified in the deeply supercooled regime due to structural fluctuations between disordered and tetrahedral local structures. Here, we compare structural data from recent x-ray laser scattering measurements of water at 1 bar and temperatures down to 227 K with structural properties computed for several different water models using molecular dynamics simulations. Based on this comparison, we critically evaluate four different thermodynamic scenarios that have been invoked to explain the unusual behavior of water. The critical point-free model predicts small variations in the tetrahedrality with decreasing temperature, followed by a stepwise change at the liquid-liquid transition around 228 K at ambient pressure. This scenario is not consistent with the experimental data that instead show a smooth and accelerated variation in structure from 320 to 227 K. Both the singularity-free model and ice coarsening hypothesis give trends that indirectly indicate an increase in tetrahedral structure with temperature that is too weak to be consistent with experiment. A model that includes an apparent divergent point (ADP) at high positive pressure, however, predicts structural development consistent with our experimental measurements. The terminology ADP, instead of the commonly used liquid-liquid critical point, is more general in that it focuses on the growing fluctuations, whether or not they result in true criticality. Extrapolating this model beyond the experimental data, we estimate that an ADP in real water may lie around 1500 ± 250 bars and 190 ± 6 K.