Relation between growth and melt shapes of ice crystals

✍ Scribed by Minoru Maruyama

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 583 KB
• Volume: 318
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-0248
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jcrysgro.2010.10.076

✦ Synopsis

Under near-equilibrium growth or melt conditions, ice crystals in the melt are bounded by two parallel facets (basal planes or c-facets) and rounded surfaces between the facets. We observed such disk-shaped ice crystals perpendicularly to the c-axis in two and three dimensions, and found that the growth and melt shapes are asymmetric. On imposition of a small driving force, a rounded crystal grew to be partially faceted with a loss of vicinal surfaces and a formation of surface-slope discontinuities at the facet edges, and then the partially faceted crystal melted to be rounded with enlarging vicinal surfaces. The rounded surfaces grew with a decreasing curvature and melted with an increasing curvature.