Stability Limit of Water by Metastable Vapor–Liquid Equilibrium with Nanoporous Silicon Membranes

I-Tzu Chen (1) , David A. Sessoms (1) , Zachary Sherman (1) , Eugene Choi (1) , Olivier O. Vincent (1) , Abraham D. Stroock (1)

1 Cornell University [New York]

Liquid can sustain mechanical tension as its pressure drops below the vapor-liquid coexistence line and becomes less than zero, until it reaches the stability limit – the pressure at which cavitation (i.e. the nucleation of vapor bubbles in bulk liquid) inevitably occurs. For liquid water, its stability limit is still a subject of debate: the results obtained by researchers using a variety of techniques show discrepancies between the values of stability limit and its temperature-dependence as temperature approaches 0°C. In this work, we present a study of the stability limit of water with the metastable vapor-liquid equilibrium (MVLE) method in which a volume of liquid is equilibrated with its unsaturated vapor via nanoporous silicon membrane. We also report on an experimental system which enables test of the temperature-dependence of the stability limit with MVLE. Our results falls in the range between -20 and -30 MPa; a range that is in consistent with the majority of the experiments but is far less negative than the limit obtained in experiments involving quartz inclusions and that predicted for homogeneous nucleation. Further, the stability limit we found increases monotonically (larger tension) as temperature approaches 0°C; this trend contradicts the centrifugal result of Briggs but agrees with the experiments by acoustic cavitation.

Domaines: Dynamique des Fluides [physics.flu-dyn]; Chimie-Physique [physics.chem-ph]; Matière Condensée [cond-mat]; Micro et nanotechnologies/Microélectronique; Matériaux

I-Tzu Chen, David A. Sessoms, Zachary Sherman, Eugene Choi, Olivier O. Vincent, et al.. Stability Limit of Water by Metastable Vapor–Liquid Equilibrium with Nanoporous Silicon Membranes. Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 2016, 120 (23), pp.5209-5222. ⟨10.1021/acs.jpcb.6b01618⟩. ⟨hal-02568905⟩