Scientists have discovered a new exotic form of ice

Until now, 18 crystalline forms of ice have been known, which differ in the arrangement of their atoms. However,

strictly speaking, these are not really idealcrystals, but disordered systems in which water molecules are randomly oriented in different spatial directions. Types of ice, known as polymorphs, form depending on pressure and temperature and have very different properties. For example, their melting points differ by several hundred degrees Celsius. Scientists compare the types of ice to diamond and graphite, both of which are made of pure carbon.

Now there are 19. The results of the study are published in the journal Nature Communications.

In snowflakes or ice cubes from the refrigeratoroxygen atoms are hexagonal. This form is called ice I. There are no other forms of ice on the surface of the Earth, although under laboratory conditions, changing temperature and pressure, scientists obtain other crystalline modifications - polymorphs.

Forms of ice VI and ice VII under high pressureare found as inclusions in diamonds and have therefore been added to the list of minerals by the International Mineralogical Association (IMA). Many varieties of water ice form in the vastness of space under special pressure and temperature conditions. They are found, for example, on celestial bodies such as Jupiter's moon Ganymede, which is covered with layers of ice of various kinds.

By changing the conditions for the crystallization of ice VI, namely, slowing down the cooling process and increasing the pressure to about 20 kilobars, the authors obtained a modification with a new arrangement of hydrogen atoms - ice XIX.

“At that we found clearevidence that this is a new ordered variant, but we were not able to figure out its crystal structure at the time,” explains study leader Thomas Loerting.

In the current study, the authors have succeededdone, and using the method of neutron diffraction, which is considered the gold standard for determining the crystal structure. For this, it was necessary to find the best variant of the structure among the results of several thousand measurements.

Ice XV and Ice XIX are the first related pair of polymorphic ice species in which the oxygen lattice is the same, but the order of the hydrogen atoms is different.

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