Can thin disk-like ice clusters be more stable than compact droplet-like ice clusters?

摘要

The relative stability of water clusters of two different morphologies has been examined with the size N ranging from 54 to 864: the first one is a circular fragment of bilayer ice (a disk-like cluster), and the second one is a spherical fragment of normal cubic ice (a droplet-like cluster). We found a crossover at N_c approx= 1000, below which the disk-like cluster becomes more energetically favorable. The crossover arises because the potential energy (per molecule) for the droplet-like cluster decreases linearly with N~(-1/3) whereas it decreases by N~(-1/2) for the disk-like cluster.