Objective "Water is ubiquitous and so an understanding of water’s anomalous liquid state is crucial for such diverse fields as protein biochemistry, meteorology or astrophysics. A postulated first order phase transition between two distinct one-component liquids at low temperatures is believed to be the key to many riddles in contemporary science: a “fragile” liquid of high density and a “strong” liquid of low density. At higher temperatures the phase boundary might end in a speculative second critical point in supercooled water. Unfortunately it has not been possible so far to support/falsify these hypotheses with direct experiments because of fast crystallization of the liquid(s) in the relevant portion of the phase diagram, which is called ""no man's land"". Therefore, experiments to test the hypothesis were previously done in the non-crystalline, solid state (“amorphous water”) at temperatures well below the ""no man's land"". More than 20 years ago liquid-like relaxation was measured on heating glassy water at 1 bar to 136 - 150 K, i.e. to temperatures slightly below crystallization, which is still discussed controversially. Recently we managed to observe liquid-like properties on heating high density amorphous ice (HDA) under isobaric conditions at pressures up to 1 GPa above its glass-liquid transition at a temperature slightly below the ""no man's land"" without observing significant crystallization. These findings open the exciting possibility to characterize (e.g. by dilatometry, thermal analysis and dielectric spectroscopy) deeply supercooled liquid water both at ambient and high pressure conditions and to check if water indeed shows a first order liquid-liquid phase transition between two distinct liquids. This will unravel the question how many liquids and how many corresponding amorphous states there are in water, and if VHDA discovered by us in 2001 shows a polyamorphic transition to HDA, or if it is simply annealed HDA." Fields of science natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesmeteorologynatural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteinsnatural sciencesphysical sciencesastronomyastrophysicsnatural scienceschemical sciencesanalytical chemistrycalorimetrynatural sciencesphysical sciencesopticsspectroscopy Keywords glass-liquid transition Programme(s) FP7-IDEAS-ERC - Specific programme: "Ideas" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013) Topic(s) ERC-SG-PE3 - ERC Starting Grant - Condensed matter physics Call for proposal ERC-2007-StG See other projects for this call Funding Scheme ERC-SG - ERC Starting Grant Host institution UNIVERSITAET INNSBRUCK EU contribution € 1 389 238,00 Address INNRAIN 52 6020 Innsbruck Austria See on map Region Westösterreich Tirol Innsbruck Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Principal investigator Thomas Loerting (Dr.) Administrative Contact Robert Rebitsch (Dr.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Total cost No data Beneficiaries (1) Sort alphabetically Sort by EU Contribution Expand all Collapse all UNIVERSITAET INNSBRUCK Austria EU contribution € 1 389 238,00 Address INNRAIN 52 6020 Innsbruck See on map Region Westösterreich Tirol Innsbruck Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Principal investigator Thomas Loerting (Dr.) Administrative Contact Robert Rebitsch (Dr.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Total cost No data
