Morphology and crystallization kinetics of compact (HGW) and porous (ASW) amorphous water ice

Abstract

An investigation of porosity and isothermal crystallization kinetics of amorphous ice produced either by background water vapour deposition (ASW) or by hyperquenching of liquid droplets (HGW) is presented. These two types of ice are relevant for astronomical ice research (Gálvez et al., Astrophys. J., 2010, 724, 539) and are studied here for the first time under comparable experimental conditions. From CH₄ isothermal adsorption experiments at 40 K, surface areas of 280 ± 30 m² g⁻¹ for the ASW deposits and of 40 ± 12 m² g⁻¹ for comparable HGW samples were obtained. The crystallization kinetics was studied at 150 K by following the evolution of the band shape of the OD stretching vibration in HDO doped ASW and HGW samples generated at 14 K, 40 K and 90 K. Comparable rate constants of ∼7 × 10⁻⁴ s⁻¹ were obtained in all cases. However a significant difference was found between the n Avrami parameter of the samples generated at 14 K (n ∼ 1) and that of the rest (n > 2). This result hints at the possible existence of a structurally different form of amorphous ice for very low generation temperatures, already suggested in previous literature works.