EPJE Topical review - Advances in the study of supercooled water

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Published on 29 November 2021

Water connects to life at many levels, from biology to human activities, health, climate, and technology. And it is the most peculiar simple liquid on our planet. In fact, water presents several anomalies as compared to other simple liquids. These anomalies become more conspicuous at low temperatures within the metastable supercooled regime, that is, the region below its melting point where the stable form is the ordered solid. In this regime water can also exist in the liquid state while at lower temperatures it can also be found in the amorphous (glassy) solid state. In the supercooled state liquid water displays polymorphism displaying both a high density and a low-density structure. The two possible structures that water can choose, and their interplay, are connected with the possible existence of the terminating (critical) point of a line that separates a low-density region from a high-density region and above which the liquid exists in a single phase.

In a new Review Article published in EPJE, a large international team of authors report on recent progress in the fields of supercooled and glassy water, water in solutions and confined water, achieved through experiment, theory and computational studies. The review treats the different thermodynamic scenarios hypothesized for the supercooled region, the two-liquid state picture of water, its implications to the structure and dynamics which are intimately connected to its thermodynamics. The role of cooperative effects in this hydrogen-bonded liquid and the polyamorphism of glassy water both in bulk and in salty aqueous solutions are also discussed.