Vitrification and glass transition of water: insights from spin probe ESR

Abstract

Three long-standing problems related to the physics of water, viz., the possibility of vitrifying bulk water by rapid quenching, its glass transition, and the supposed impossibility of obtaining supercooled water between 150 and 233 K, the so-called “no man's land" of its phase diagram, are studied using the highly sensitive technique of spin probe ESR. Our results suggest that water can indeed be vitrified by rapid quenching; it undergoes a glass transition at tilde135 K, and the relaxation behavior studied using this method between 165 K and 233 K closely follows the predictions of the Adam-Gibbs model.