Research at the EuXFEL on the structural pathway of glass formation in supercooled liquid water

Tobias Eklund from Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz and Katrin Amann-Winkel from Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz turned water into glass.
Amorphous ices are suggested to be the liquid counterparts of two different liquid states of water. Eklund and Amann-Winkel used low-density amorphous ice as starting material for an infrared-pump-X-ray-probe experiment at the FXE instrument (Femtosecond X-ray Experiments). The amorphous-liquid-glass transition was triggered by laser induced heating and subsequent rapid quenching.
Their experiment resolved the structural pathway of glass formation in supercooled liquid water. The resulting structural data will answer the long-standing question on how the structure of supercooled water evolves inside the so-called no man’s land, where eventually low-density liquid water transforms to the low-density amorphous ice state.