Liquid-liquid transition in supercooled aqueous solution involving a low-temperature phase similar to low-density amorphous water

TL;DR

This study reveals a reversible liquid-liquid transition in supercooled aqueous solutions involving a low-temperature phase similar to low-density amorphous water, enhancing understanding of water's anomalous properties.

Contribution

It demonstrates a structural and spectroscopic characterization of a liquid-liquid transition in supercooled water using infrared spectroscopy, linking it to low-density amorphous water.

Findings

Discontinuous change in hydrogen-bond structure at transition temperature

Low-temperature liquid resembles low-density amorphous water

Transition is fully reversible and occurs within less than 1 K

Abstract

The striking anomalies in physical properties of supercooled water that were discovered in the 1960-70s, remain incompletely understood and so provide both a source of controversy amongst theoreticians, and a stimulus to experimentalists and simulators to find new ways of penetrating the "crystallization curtain" that effectively shields the problem from solution. Recently a new door on the problem was opened by showing that, in ideal solutions, made using ionic liquid solutes, water anomalies are not destroyed as earlier found for common salt and most molecular solutes, but instead are enhanced to the point of precipitating an apparently first order liquid-liquid transition. The evidence was a spike in apparent heat capacity during cooling that could be fully reversed during reheating before any sign of ice crystallization appeared. Here, we use decoupled-oscillator infrared spectroscopy to define the structural character of this phenomenon using similar down and upscan rates as in the calorimetric study. Thin-film samples also permit slow scans (1 K/min) in which the transition has a width of less than 1 K, and is fully reversible. The OH spectrum changes discontinuously at the phase-transition temperature, indicating a discrete change in hydrogen-bond structure. The spectral changes show that the low-temperature liquid is more strongly hydrogen bonded and less disordered as compared to the high-temperature liquid. The spectrum of the low-temperature liquid is essentially that seen in low-density amorphous water. This similarity suggests that the liquid-liquid transition observed here also exists in neat undercooled water, providing a unified explanation for many of its anomalies.