Is it feasible to freeze liquid water using an electrical field? The question has remained open since the second half of the nineteenth century, when physicist Louis Dufour expressed concern about it and sparked a heated debate in the scientific community about the possibility of applying electrofreezing, i.e. the crystallization of a substance induced by electric fields, to water, as occurs in many natural and technological processes. From tropospheric dynamics to food chemistry, from microchip cooling to microfluidics and catalysis. Consider how the freezing process of snowflakes is significantly affected in the presence of electric fields. Today, a research group from the Institute for Chemical-Physical Processes of the National Research Council of Messina (CNR-Ipcf), in collaboration with British colleagues from IBM Research Europe, demonstrated for the first time, using advanced supercomputer simulation methods, that intense electric fields can induce a transition from the liquid phase to a new glassy phase of water. The researchers called this novel phase ferroelectric glassy water (f-GW). This new phase appears to be present in numerous biological, natural, and technological situations. Its understanding could lead to significant breakthroughs, such as modifying antibiotic and protein interactions with biological membranes or enhancing the cooling effect in microelectronics, hence accelerating the drive for miniaturization.
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