A Tale of Two Waters

Yang Zhang (Oak Ridge National Lab)

Water is the most ubiquitous substance on earth, and is essential to sustain all known forms of life. However, a coherent picture of the unusual phase behavior of water is so far lacking. The most promising scenario under scrutiny relies on the hypothetical existence of a liquid-liquid phase transition and its associated liquid-liquid critical point. By using neutron scattering technique, we have extensively investigated the properties of confined water in the relative region of the phase diagram. Many unexpected phenomena are observed in the measured thermodynamic and dynamic response functions of the confined water. We interpret our findings as support for the hypothetical existence of the second critical point of water that would exist in the macroscopic system if the crystallization could be avoided. These experimental results of confined water may stimulate new ideas to the research on various glassy systems, as well as innumerable examples in soft condensed matters, where randomness and cooperativity are common and intrinsic.

Back to Seminar Home Page

Last modified 28-January-2011 by website owner: NCNR (attn: )