↓ Skip to main content

Ultrafast X-ray probing of water structure below the homogeneous ice nucleation temperature

Overview of attention for article published in Nature, June 2014
Altmetric Badge

About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (99th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (84th percentile)

Mentioned by

news
16 news outlets
blogs
5 blogs
twitter
17 X users
weibo
1 weibo user
facebook
1 Facebook page
reddit
1 Redditor

Citations

dimensions_citation
394 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
401 Mendeley
citeulike
1 CiteULike
You are seeing a free-to-access but limited selection of the activity Altmetric has collected about this research output. Click here to find out more.
Title
Ultrafast X-ray probing of water structure below the homogeneous ice nucleation temperature
Published in
Nature, June 2014
DOI 10.1038/nature13266
Pubmed ID
Authors

J. A. Sellberg, C. Huang, T. A. McQueen, N. D. Loh, H. Laksmono, D. Schlesinger, R. G. Sierra, D. Nordlund, C. Y. Hampton, D. Starodub, D. P. DePonte, M. Beye, C. Chen, A. V. Martin, A. Barty, K. T. Wikfeldt, T. M. Weiss, C. Caronna, J. Feldkamp, L. B. Skinner, M. M. Seibert, M. Messerschmidt, G. J. Williams, S. Boutet, L. G. M. Pettersson, M. J. Bogan, A. Nilsson

Abstract

Water has a number of anomalous physical properties, and some of these become drastically enhanced on supercooling below the freezing point. Particular interest has focused on thermodynamic response functions that can be described using a normal component and an anomalous component that seems to diverge at about 228 kelvin (refs 1-3). This has prompted debate about conflicting theories that aim to explain many of the anomalous thermodynamic properties of water. One popular theory attributes the divergence to a phase transition between two forms of liquid water occurring in the 'no man's land' that lies below the homogeneous ice nucleation temperature (TH) at approximately 232 kelvin and above about 160 kelvin, and where rapid ice crystallization has prevented any measurements of the bulk liquid phase. In fact, the reliable determination of the structure of liquid water typically requires temperatures above about 250 kelvin. Water crystallization has been inhibited by using nanoconfinement, nanodroplets and association with biomolecules to give liquid samples at temperatures below TH, but such measurements rely on nanoscopic volumes of water where the interaction with the confining surfaces makes the relevance to bulk water unclear. Here we demonstrate that femtosecond X-ray laser pulses can be used to probe the structure of liquid water in micrometre-sized droplets that have been evaporatively cooled below TH. We find experimental evidence for the existence of metastable bulk liquid water down to temperatures of 227(-1)(+2) kelvin in the previously largely unexplored no man's land. We observe a continuous and accelerating increase in structural ordering on supercooling to approximately 229 kelvin, where the number of droplets containing ice crystals increases rapidly. But a few droplets remain liquid for about a millisecond even at this temperature. The hope now is that these observations and our detailed structural data will help identify those theories that best describe and explain the behaviour of water.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 17 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 401 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 9 2%
Germany 4 <1%
Switzerland 4 <1%
United Kingdom 3 <1%
Spain 2 <1%
Korea, Republic of 1 <1%
China 1 <1%
Sweden 1 <1%
Japan 1 <1%
Other 1 <1%
Unknown 374 93%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Researcher 107 27%
Student > Ph. D. Student 97 24%
Student > Master 39 10%
Professor 25 6%
Student > Bachelor 24 6%
Other 66 16%
Unknown 43 11%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Physics and Astronomy 123 31%
Chemistry 99 25%
Materials Science 44 11%
Engineering 23 6%
Chemical Engineering 10 2%
Other 39 10%
Unknown 63 16%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 176. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 20 January 2021.
All research outputs
#188,340
of 22,757,541 outputs
Outputs from Nature
#11,991
of 90,814 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#1,619
of 228,271 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Nature
#160
of 1,014 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,757,541 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 90,814 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 99.2. This one has done well, scoring higher than 86% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 228,271 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 1,014 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 84% of its contemporaries.