title: Interfacial Free Energy as the Key to the Pressure-Induced Deceleration of Ice Nucleation.
abstract: The avoidance of water freezing is the holy grail in the cryopreservation of biological samples, food, and organs. Fast cooling rates are used to beat ice nucleation and avoid cell damage. This strategy can be enhanced by applying high pressures to decrease the nucleation rate, but the physics behind this procedure has not been fully understood yet. We perform computer experiments to investigate ice nucleation at high pressures consisting in embedding ice seeds in supercooled water. We find that the slowing down of the nucleation rate is mainly due to an increase of the ice I-water interfacial free energy with pressure. Our work also clarifies the molecular mechanism of ice nucleation for a wide pressure range. This study is not only relevant to cryopreservation, but also to water amorphization and climate change modeling.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Quimica Fisica I, Facultad de Ciencias Quimicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Jorge R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Espinosa
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Quimica Fisica I, Facultad de Ciencias Quimicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Alberto
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Zaragoza
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Quimica Fisica I, Facultad de Ciencias Quimicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Pablo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Rosales-Pelaez
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Quimica Fisica I, Facultad de Ciencias Quimicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Caridad
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Navarro
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Quimica Fisica I, Facultad de Ciencias Quimicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain.|Departamento de Fisica Aplicada I, Facultad de Ciencias Fisicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Chantal
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Valeriani
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Quimica Fisica I, Facultad de Ciencias Quimicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Carlos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Vega
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Quimica Fisica I, Facultad de Ciencias Quimicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Eduardo
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Sanz