Novel ice structures in carbon nanopores: pressure enhancement effect of confinement

We report experimental results on the structure and melting behavior of ice confined in multi-walled carbon nanotubes and ordered mesoporous carbon CMK-3, which is the carbon replica of a SBA-15 silica template. The silica template has cylindrical mesopores with micropores connecting the walls of neighboring mesopores. The structure of the carbon replica material CMK-3 consists of carbon rods connected by smaller side-branches, with quasi-cylindrical mesopores of average pore size 4.9 nm and micropores of 0.6 nm. Neutron diffraction and differential scanning calorimetry have been used to determine the structure of the confined ice and the solid-liquid transition temperature. The results are compared with the behavior of water in multi-walled carbon nanotubes of inner diameters of 2.4 nm and 4 nm studied by the same methods. For D(2)O in CMK-3 we find evidence of the existence of nanocrystals of cubic ice and ice IX; the diffraction results also suggest the presence of ice VIII, although this is less conclusive. We find evidence of cubic ice in the case of the carbon nanotubes. For bulk water these crystal forms only occur at temperatures below 170 K in the case of cubic ice, and at pressures of hundreds or thousands of MPa in the case of ice VIII and IX. These phases appear to be stabilized by the confinement.     

Melting behavior of water in cylindrical pores: carbon nanotubes and silica glasses

We report a study of the effects of confinement in multi-walled carbon nanotubes and mesoporous silica glasses (SBA-15) on the solid structure and melting of both H(2)O and D(2)O ice, using differential scanning calorimetry, dielectric relaxation spectroscopy, and neutron diffraction. Multi-walled nanotubes of 2.4, 3.9 and 10 nm are studied, and the SBA-15 studied has pores of mean diameter 3.9 nm; temperatures ranging from approximately 110 to 290 K were studied. We find that the melting point is depressed relative to the bulk water for all systems studied, with the depression being greater in the case of the silica mesopores. These results are shown to be consistent with molecular simulation studies of freezing in silica and carbon materials. The neutron diffraction data show that the cubic phase of ice is stabilized by the confinement in carbon nanotubes, as well as in silica mesopores, and persists up to temperatures of about 240 K, above which there is a transition to the hexagonal ice structure.     

均匀电场对冰晶结构及生长的影响

Homogeneous crystallization of supercooled water under electric field with strength ranging from 4.0 to 40.0 V·nm^-1 was investigated by using molecular simulation technique. The liquid-solid transition was successfully obtained based on ice component analysis using the CHILL algorithm. The analysis suggested that the produced crystalline was cubic ice dominant. The influence of the field strength on the structure and the growth rate of the ice was studied. The results revealed that the presence of an electric field drove the system to crystallize rapidly into dense and distorted cubic ice. The density of the crystals increased as a function of the field strength, from 0.98 to 1.08 g·cm^-3. The growth rate of the ice nucleus increased along with the field strength according to the characteristic time derived from the Avrami equation which ranged from 0.254 to 5.513 ns. This type of acceleration can be partially attributed to the enhancement of the rotational dynamics of the water molecules. Moreover, by monitoring the formation history of the cubic ice, we found that the defective ice acted as a transition state linking the liquid water and the cubic ice.     

均匀电场对冰晶结构及生长的影响

采用分子动力学模拟方法研究了强度为4.0-40.0 V·nm^-1的均匀电场对过冷水冰晶结构和冰晶生长速率的影响. 文中通过CHILL 算法来识别不同的冰相结构,通过拟合Avrami 公式来得到冰晶生长所需的特征时间. 结果表明,在所施加的电场强度范围内生成的冰相以立方冰为主. 随着电场强度的增加,形成的立方冰的变形程度逐渐增大,冰晶的密度从0.98 g·cm^-3 增加到1.08 g·cm^-3,同时冰晶生长的特征时间从5.153 ns 减小到0.254 ns,冰晶生长的速率逐渐增长. 对水分子的动力学分析表明,冰晶生长速率增加的部分原因是电场能够促进水分子运动到形成冰晶所需要的取向. 此外,对冰相分子形成过程的分析表明缺陷冰分子在冰晶的生长过程中扮演着中间态的角色. 随电场强度的增加,由缺陷冰转变为立方冰的比例增长的速率逐渐提高.     

Evaluation of thermoporometry for characterization of mesoporous materials

The accuracy of thermoporometry (TPM) in terms of the characterization of SBA-15 is examined based on a model that classifies the water in the mesopores into two different types: freezable pore water, which can form cylindrical ice crystals, and nonfreezable pore water, which cannot undergo a phase transition during a differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) measurement. Applying the empirical relationship between the sizes of the ice crystals formed in the mesopores and the solidification temperature of the freezable pore water to a thermogram (a recording of the heat flux during the solidification of the freezable pore water) yielded a size distribution of the ice crystals. The size of the ice crystals increased slightly with repetitive freezing, indicating that the mesopores were enlarged by formation of the ice crystals. Adding the thickness, t(nf), of the nonfreezable pore water layer to the ice crystal-size distribution calculated from the thermogram allowed for the determination of the porous properties of SBA-15. The porous properties attained from TPM experiments were compared with the results attained through the combination of Ar gas adsorption experiments and nonlocal density functional theory (NLDFT) analysis. The porous properties determined by TPM were confirmed to be quite sensitive to the t(nf) value.     

Formation and stability of cubic ice in water droplets

There is growing evidence that a metastable phase of ice, cubic ice, plays an important role in the Earth's troposphere and stratosphere. Cubic ice may also be important in diverse fields such as cryobiology and planetary sciences. Using X-ray diffraction, we studied the formation of cubic ice in pure water droplets suspended in an oil matrix as a function of droplet size. The results show that droplets of volume median diameter 5.6 microm froze dominantly to cubic ice with stacking faults. These results support previous suggestions that cubic ice is the crystalline phase that nucleates when pure water droplets freeze homogeneously at approximately 235 K. It is also shown that as the size of the water droplets increased from 5.6 to 17.0 microm, the formation of the stable phase of ice, hexagonal ice, was favoured. This size dependence can be rationalised with heat transfer calculations. We also investigated the stability of cubic ice that forms in water droplets suspended in an oil matrix. We observe cubic ice up to 243 K, much higher in temperature than observed in many previous studies. This result adds to the existing literature that shows bulk ice I(c) can persist up to approximately 240 K. The transformation of cubic ice to hexagonal ice also showed a complex time and temperature dependence, proceeding rapidly at first and then slowing down and coming to a halt. These combined results help explain why cubic ice forms in some experiments described in the literature and not others.     

Homogeneous ice nucleation from supercooled water

Homogeneous ice nucleation from supercooled water was studied in the temperature range of 220-240 K through combining the forward flux sampling method (Allen et al., J. Chem. Phys., 2006, 124, 024102) with molecular dynamics simulations (FFS/MD), based on a recently developed coarse-grained water model (mW) (Molinero et al., J. Phys. Chem. B, 2009, 113, 4008). The calculated ice nucleation rates display a strong temperature dependence, ranging from 2.148 ± 0.635 × 10(25) m(-3) s(-1) at 220 K to 1.672 ± 0.970 × 10(-7) m(-3) s(-1) at 240 K. These rates can be fitted according to the classical nucleation theory, yielding an estimate of the effective ice-water interface energy γ(ls) of 31.01 ± 0.21 mJ m(-2) for the mW water model. Compared to experiments, our calculation underestimates the homogeneous ice nucleation rate by a few orders of magnitude. Possible reasons for the discrepancy are discussed. The nucleating ice embryo contains both cubic ice Ic and hexagonal ice Ih, with the fraction of each structure being roughly 50% when the critical size is reached. In particular, a novel defect structure containing nearly five-fold twin boundaries is identified in the ice clusters formed during nucleation. The way such defect structure is formed is found to be different from mechanisms proposed for the formation of the same defect in metallic nanoparticles and thin film. The quasi five-fold twin boundary structure found here is expected to occur in the crystallization of a wide range of materials with the diamond cubic structure, including ice.     

Is it cubic? Ice crystallization from deeply supercooled water

Ice crystallized below 200 K has the diffraction pattern of a faulty cubic ice, and not of the most stable hexagonal ice polymorph. The origin and structure of this faulty cubic ice, presumed to form in the atmosphere, has long been a puzzle. Here we use large-scale molecular dynamics simulations with the mW water model to investigate the crystallization of water at 180 K and elucidate the development of cubic and hexagonal features in ice as it nucleates, grows and consolidates into crystallites with characteristic dimensions of a few nanometres. The simulations indicate that the ice crystallized at 180 K contains layers of cubic ice and hexagonal ice in a ratio of approximately 2 to 1. The stacks of hexagonal ice are very short, mostly one and two layers, and their frequency does not seem to follow a regular pattern. In spite of the high fraction of hexagonal layers, the diffraction pattern of the crystals is, as in the experiments, almost identical to that of cubic ice. Stacking of cubic and hexagonal layers is observed for ice nuclei with as little as 200 water molecules, but a preference for cubic ice is already well developed in ice nuclei one order of magnitude smaller: the critical ice nuclei at 180 K contain approximately ten water molecules in their core and are already rich in cubic ice. The energies of the cubic-rich and hexagonal-rich nuclei are indistinguishable, suggesting that the enrichment in cubic ice does not have a thermodynamic origin.     

Synthesis of FDU-1 silica with narrow pore size distribution and tailorable pore entrance size in the presence of sodium chloride

Ordered silicas with large (9-15 nm), uniform, cagelike mesopores were synthesized under acidic aqueous conditions from tetraethyl orthosilicate in the presence of sodium chloride using poly(ethylene oxide)-poly(butylene oxide)-poly(ethylene oxide) triblock copolymer B50-6600 (EO39BO47EO39, Dow Chemicals) as a supramolecular template. Except for the use of NaCl in our case, the synthesis mixture composition was the same as that originally reported by Zhao et al. for the synthesis of FDU-1 silica, which was later shown to exhibit a cubic close-packed (Fm3m) structure with stacking faults related to the occurrence of hexagonal close-packed stacking sequences. The copolymer-templated silicas were formed at room temperature and in most cases were subjected to the hydrothermal treatment at 373 or 393 K. The calcined materials were characterized using small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and nitrogen and argon adsorption at 77 K. SAXS patterns were generally similar to those reported for FDU-1 silica, indicating the cubic close-packed (Fm3m) structure, but the presence of stacking faults characteristic of a hexagonal close-packed structure cannot be precluded. The addition of the salt was found to significantly narrow the pore size distributions and to improve the uniformity of entrances to the cagelike mesopores, whereas the pore diameter, specific surface area, and pore volume were similar (in most cases slightly lower) to those for FDU-1 silicas obtained in the absence of NaCl. The materials synthesized in the presence of NaCl also appeared to have better resolved SAXS patterns. The feasibility of tailoring the pore cage diameter (from approximately 9.5 to 14.5 nm) and pore entrance diameter (from below 4 to approximately 8 nm) simply by adjusting the hydrothermal treatment temperature and time was demonstrated, indicating that these simple and convenient ways of structural design of cagelike mesopores are operative in the case of syntheses in the presence of inorganic salts.     

Time-resolved in situ studies of the formation of cubic mesoporous silica formed with triblock copolymers

The mechanism of formation of two different cubic mesoporous silica materials formed with Pluronic triblock copolymers is investigated with in situ time-resolved small-angle synchrotron X-ray scattering, in situ time-resolved 1H nuclear magnetic resonance, and time-resolved transmission electron microscopy. The materials studied are the micellar cubic (Imm) SBA-16 formed with Pluronic F108 and the bicontinuous cubic (Iad) silica material formed with Pluronic P103 and NaI. The formation mechanisms of the two cubic structures are shown to be dissimilar. For the Imm material, in the early stages of the synthesis, flocs of unordered micelles are observed, but areas where the micelles have started to order are also present. With time, there is an increase in order; however, there is a coexistence of unordered micelles and ordered material all through this study. The bicontinuous cubic silica is formed via a different path. The system is phase-separated already before the addition of the silica source, which implies that a concentrated phase is present, acting as the structure director of the Iad structure. The results are compared with earlier reports on the formation of the hexagonal SBA-15 material.     

Powder X-ray diffraction observations of ice crystals formed from disaccharide solutions

Powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) measurements on rapid freezing samples of disaccharide (trehalose, sucrose, and maltose) solutions indicated that the crystalline phases in the sample were both hexagonal and cubic ice. The cubic ice existed at a higher ratio in the higher disaccharide concentration samples. The temperature ramping experiments revealed that the cubic ice was stable below 233 K, which was obviously higher than the temperature expected for a pure water system. The diffraction peak width of the hexagonal ice crystal was independent in the disaccharide concentrations. This indicated that the crystallite size of the hexagonal ice was more than several hundreds of nanometre, which coincided with the ice particle size previously observed in the freeze-fractured replica samples. The comparison of the present PXRD data with the replica observations by transmission electron microscope in an earlier study allows us to conclude that the cubic ice was formed at the grain boundary between the hexagonal ice and the coexisted non-crystalline disaccharide phase.     

Formation of monolithic silica gel microhoneycombs (SMHs) using pseudosteady state growth of microstructural ice crystals

Monolithic silica gel microhoneycombs, which have an array of straight macropores within their structure and developed micro/mesopores inside their walls, were prepared using pseudosteady state growth of ice crystals which occurs during the unidirectional freeze-gelation of freshly gelled aqueous silica hydrogels, followed by a pore-protecting drying method, freeze drying.     

Fabrication of Microporous Metal–Organic Frameworks in Uninterrupted Mesoporous Tunnels: Hierarchical Structure for Efficient Trypsin Immobilization and Stabilization

Hierarchically porous metal–organic frameworks (HP‐MOFs) are promising in various applications. Most reported HP‐MOFs are prepared based on the generation of mesopores in microporous frameworks, and the formed mesopores are connected by microporous channels, limiting the accessibility of mesopores for bulky molecules. A hierarchical structure is formed by constructing microporous MOFs in uninterrupted mesoporous tunnels. Using the confined space in as‐prepared mesoporous silica, highly dispersed metal precursors for MOFs are coated on the internal surface of mesoporous tunnels. Ligand vapor‐induced crystallization is employed to enable quantitative formation of MOFs in situ, in which sublimated ligands diffuse into mesoporous tunnels and react with metal precursors. The obtained hierarchically porous composites exhibit record‐high adsorption capacity for the bulky molecule trypsin. The thermal and storage stability of trypsin is improved upon immobilization on the composites.     

Studies on the growth of ice crystal templates during the synthesis of a monolithic silica microhoneycomb using the ice templating method

Porous materials with a wide variety of functions can be obtained through sol-gel synthesis. Recently, we found that sol-gel based materials can be molded into a monolithic microhoneycomb structure by simply freezing their parent hydrogels unidirectionally. The main feature of the monoliths obtained through this method, which we named the Ice Templating Method, is that they have straight and aligned macropores, the sizes of which are in the micrometer range. As these macropores are the traces of the ice crystals which are formed during freezing and which practically act as the template, the sizes as well as the shape of them depend on how the template ice crystals are formed and how they grow. Therefore in this work, the growth behavior of the ice crystals formed during the unidirectional freezing of a silica hydrogel was examined and the influences of this growth behavior on the properties of the resulting monoliths were verified.     

Preparation of Hierarchical Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles through a Single‐Templating Approach

Silicas with hierarchical porous architectures attracted much attention, due to their potential applications in catalysis and separation. Generally, they were prepared through dual‐ or triple‐templating approaches. Herein, mesoporous silica nanoparticles with rod‐like pore channels inside and lamellar mesopores on the surfaces were prepared using the self‐assemblies of a chiral low‐molecular‐weight amphiphile as templates through a single‐templating approach. The formation of the lamellar mesopores was studied by taking field‐emission scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy images after different reaction times. The lamellar pores were proposed to be formed by merging rod‐like micelles during the sol‐gel process. Moreover, helical nanofibers with rod‐like pore channels inside and lamellar mesopores on the surfaces were prepared with the addition of n‐octanol as a co‐structure‐directing agent.     

Constructing Intrapenetrated Hierarchical Zeolites with Highly Complete Framework via Protozeolite Seeding

Creation of intrapenetrated mesopores with open highway from external surface into the interior of zeolite crystals are highly desirable that can significantly improve the molecular transport and active sites accessibility of microporous zeolites to afford enhanced catalytic properties. Here, different from traditional zeolite-seeded methods that generally produced isolated mesopores in zeolites, nanosized amorphous protozeolites with embryo structure of zeolites were used as seeds for the construction of single-crystalline hierarchical ZSM-5 zeolites with intrapenetrated mesopores (mesopore volume of 0.51 cm³ g⁻¹) and highly complete framework. In this strategy, in contrast to the conventional synthesis, only a small amount of organic structure directing agents and a low crystallization temperature were adopted to promise the protozeolites as the dominant growth directing sites to induce crystallization. The protozeolite nanoseeds provided abundant nucleation sites for surrounding precursors to be crystallized, followed by oriented coalescence of crystallites resulting in the formation of intrapenetrated mesopores. The as-prepared hierarchical ZSM-5 zeolites exhibited ultra-long lifetime of 443.9 hours and a high propylene selectivity of 47.92 % at a WHSV of 2 h⁻¹ in the methanol-to-propylene reaction. This work provides a facile protozeolite-seeded strategy for the synthesis of intrapenetrated hierarchical zeolites that are highly effective for catalytic applications.     

Interaction of Antifreeze Proteins with Hydrocarbon Hydrates

Recombinant antifreeze proteins (AFPs), representing a range of activities with respect to ice growth inhibition, were investigated for their abilities to control the crystal formation and growth of hydrocarbon hydrates. Three different AFPs were compared with two synthetic commercial inhibitors, poly‐N‐vinylpyrrolidone (PVP) and HIW85281, by using multiple approaches, which included gas uptake, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) temperature ramping, and DSC isothermal observations. A new method to assess the induction period before heterogeneous nucleation and subsequent hydrate crystal growth was developed and involved the dispersal of water in the pore space of silica gel beads. Although hydrate nucleation is a complex phenomenon, we have shown that it can now be carefully quantified. The presence of AFPs delayed crystallization events and showed hydrate growth inhibition that was superior to that of one of the benchmark commercial inhibitors, PVP. Nucleation and growth inhibition were shown to be independent processes, which indicates a difference in the mechanisms required for these two inhibitory actions. In addition, there was no apparent correlation between the assayed activities of the three AFPs toward hexagonal ice and the cubic structure II (sII) hydrate, which suggests that there are distinctive differences in the protein interactions with the two crystal surfaces.     

Single-Crystalline MFI Zeolite with Sheet-Like Mesopores Layered along the a Axis

Designing a templating strategy for directing mesopore growth along different crystallographic directions is essential for fabricating two- or three-dimensional single-crystalline mesoporous zeolites. However, so far, mesopores formed in MFI zeolites by soft templates have mostly been generated by disrupting growth along the b axis; generating mesopores by disrupting growth along the a axis is rare. Herein, a single-crystalline mesoporous MFI zeolite (SCMMZ) with sheet-like mesopores layered along the a and b axes was synthesized using a triply branched surfactant with diquaternary ammonium groups connected to 1,3,5-triphenylbenzene by a six- and eight-carbon alkyl chain (TPB-6 and 8). The sheet-like mesopores were embedded in the MFI framework and were retained even after calcination. Molecular mechanics calculations provided evidence of low binding energy configurations of the surfactant that directed the growth of straight and zigzag channels along the b and a axes, respectively. The formation of nanosheets was attributed to the geometric matching of the arrangement of the aromatic groups to the zeolite framework.     

Mesoporous silicas by self-assembly of lipid molecules: ribbon, hollow sphere, and chiral materials

Using lipids (N-acyl amino acids) and 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane as structure- and co-structure-directing agents, mesoporous silicas with four different morphologies, that is, helical ribbon (HR), hollow sphere, circular disk, and helical hexagonal rod, were synthesized just by changing the synthesis temperature from 0 degrees C to 10, 15, or 20 degrees C. The structures were studied by electron microscopy. It was found that 1) the structures have double-layer disordered mesopores in the HR, radially oriented mesopores in the hollow sphere, and highly ordered straight and chiral 2D-hexagonal mesopores in the disklike structure and helical rod, respectively; 2) these four types of mesoporous silica were transformed from the flat bilayered lipid ribbon with a chain-interdigitated layer phase through a solid-solid transformation for HR formation and a dissolving procedure transformation for the synthesis of the hollow sphere, circular disk, and twisted morphologies; 3) the mesoporous silica helical ribbon was exclusively right-handed and the 2D-hexagonal chiral mesoporous silica was excessively left-handed when the L-form N-acyl amino acid was used as the lipid template; 4) the HR was formed only by the chiral lipid molecules, whereas the 2D-hexagonal chiral mesoporous silicas were formed by chiral, achiral, and racemic lipids. Our findings give important information for the understanding of the formation of chiral materials at the molecular level and will facilitate a more efficient and systematic approach to the generation of rationalized chiral libraries.     

Fabrication of Microporous Metal–Organic Frameworks in Uninterrupted Mesoporous Tunnels: Hierarchical Structure for Efficient Trypsin Immobilization and Stabilization

Hierarchically porous metal–organic frameworks (HP-MOFs) are promising in various applications. Most reported HP-MOFs are prepared based on the generation of mesopores in microporous frameworks, and the formed mesopores are connected by microporous channels, limiting the accessibility of mesopores for bulky molecules. A hierarchical structure is formed by constructing microporous MOFs in uninterrupted mesoporous tunnels. Using the confined space in as-prepared mesoporous silica, highly dispersed metal precursors for MOFs are coated on the internal surface of mesoporous tunnels. Ligand vapor-induced crystallization is employed to enable quantitative formation of MOFs in situ, in which sublimated ligands diffuse into mesoporous tunnels and react with metal precursors. The obtained hierarchically porous composites exhibit record-high adsorption capacity for the bulky molecule trypsin. The thermal and storage stability of trypsin is improved upon immobilization on the composites.